the facts in the case

 

In 2003, we bought a couple of suitcases for the China trip to gather the family together. There's the red one, which I use pretty much every time I'm gone for a few days, and the black one, its twin in every respect save for color. These cases went to China, England, China again, and Michigan, repeatedly. 

We're trying to slim down, ably obstacled by my own second-guessing, wishing for a tithe of "keep" in every batch that goes out, and trying hard not to act on it. My stomach churned on seeing this stand by the curb for two solid days, including light rains and showers. I hoped someone would come and claim it for their own future adventures. They didn't.

Today I went out to move the bins, because driveway sealers were doing their work, and I didn't want out trash guys to be inconvenienced. "We're gone in five minutes!" the man said as I wheeled the barrels, and I explained that our trash guys show up at the darnedest times and all. "Then I hope they take that stuff," I said, indicating the above cornucopia. "I took the suitcase!" said my new hero.

"YES!" I said. "That's a good fucking suitcase. We went all over with it, and it's still as good as it ever was. I didn't want to give it away in the first place, and I'm glad it's going where somebody'll use it! That suitcase is older than my daughter (I may have been off by a few months here), and we got it 23 years ago (off by one)." 

And I went on in, feeling GOOD about the suitcase, and hoping it has great adventures in the future. Only regret now is that I didn't put a sticker inside that said it had been to China, England, Escanaba. But a happy ending is a happy ending, especially when it's a beginning.

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Boxing Days

Oh, so how's it going, with the cleaning up of the box room and all that? Well, when Kathryn left here and went home, she'd cleaned the former box room, now the guest/dog room (but not guest dog room: we have limits), and had talked it over and done some things here, and I was going to keep going back to the stuff regularly, building up my muscles of discuration just as I had earlier built up my muscles of acquisition. As we're at the part of the fairy tale where all the characters march past and vanish over the horizon in a line, it turns out I'm the one who has to operate them. (Who said that's only fair? This is because it's mostly my stuff, right? Typical.)

So. On a day to day basis, I've been going back in and deciding, reckoning, a few things at a time, just up to where my brain begins to fill with small white styrofoam pellets and I have to stop. I've freed up a number of boxes, partly through the clever trick of taking the stuff out of them and piling it here and there, but the piles have meanings: There are stay piles, and there are go piles.

And today I took out the low-hanging fruit by cleaning up boxes from places in the box room, and in the dining room, and the angle of the stairs in back, and in the garage. I emptied whatever was left in them (packing junk, mostly, though I discovered that my window fan came with a bug screen, which I promptly attached), then flattened them and cut them up and stacked the pieces in the largest of the boxes. If they leave us that box, as they generally do, it'll be one of the next to go. I keep finding books I know I can get rid of before other books, so they go on a pile for that. I found my harmonicas. I find boxes that are over 50% air. This'll get easier and harder, variously, but I'm in it.

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All Quiet on the KW Cleanup [aka pt 2]

 Poking diligently through various boxes and containers, and not getting in deep, but tossing and reboxing. I bought a flat of 15 folding boxes at Staples so we can fill boxes up and dispatch them. First we'll move things out of irregular boxes and into regular ones, giving away the irregular ones first. 

So what did I actually do? Glad you asked! I looked at pens and pencils. There are still a lot in the box, but it won't happen in a day or a session. I know what to watch out for.

Here's how it works with comics: I'll sort along bravely for a while, making the tough decisions and letting the chips fall and getting things ready to go out. THEN my brain starts to fill up with teeny styro particles and it gets to a sort of tipping point where I start to say things like "But this is the only example I have (or the best one) of X, and I should had oughtta..." At this point, if I don't stop sorting and go somewhere else, I'll start taking things OFF the pile I've already chosen to go out. And it works the same way with other things.

So I have thrown out a bunch of pens. I throw out the ones that don't write, though I keep a very few which are extraordinarily novel or which possess great personal beauty. And what are these styro pellets?

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The KW Cleanup, part 1.

 Off she goes. The first sibling to visit us here is headed back to the UP of MI, leaving our house better than she found it. By request! I asked her if she'd help me in organizing and tossing things, and she did, accomplishing some minor miracles and leaving a framework for additional work to be done by, well, I guess, me. Heh. So I intend to carry through on this and, blog willing, blog it.

We started (I was there too!) in the guest room, where she slept (and where Murray is still entitled to use the bed, of course), egging me into sorting, classifying, and discarding enough that the rest went together neatly, leaving the field open for me to ruthlessly scour all the paper and near-paper piles (metaphor: They're in boxes) that constitute the Fanac bulge.

Across the hall, the fearsome box room awaited, and we made some structural changes to the spinal system of metal shelves as to allow for some sorting, so now I can make forays into the closet with all the boxes that I piled in there because they were the kind of stuff that can be quickly sorted and decided upon. I call that "mush." Many of these boxes say MUSH on them. I shall mush them.

I'm attracted to the idea of finite collections, allowed to fit a certain space and combed as needed, like Robert Crumb's 78 shelf. 

Tired of writing. Rest now. Anyway, a new label, hashtag, whatever: KW CLEANUP. More when I think of it. Oh yeah, here's one: planning to use low-impact method of sorting what's visible on top so I don't make a mess when I open a box. No big commitment, no "temporary" pile in the middle of the floor. That sort of thing. 

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