Tag Archives: clutter

Moving: Done

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As this is posting, Greg is handling the final details of vacating our old house. It took a week and a half to clean that house suitably–a sure sign that the house was too ridiculously large in the first place.

Oh, well. The me of today is not the me of two years ago.

Unfortunately, my shoulder wasn’t completely better yesterday despite being done with the steroids, and an hour medfitation, half an hour sitting and discussing a book, and over three hours of climbing around cleaning house last night have reinjured my shoulder. Could be a different injury: I still have the jerky rotation, but my shoulder burns and there’s an inconsistent tingly feeling down my arm, both of which are new. My range of motion’s no worse, though.

(As a practical question, I’d love ideas on how to meditate if I can’t sit upright or lie down without a lot of pain.)

So I’m basically one-handed today, which is the bee’s bum. I did eat a tasty, locally-grown smoked porkchop for dinner last night, though.

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Organization vs. Convenience

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I have a moving date: July 13. We’re downsizing, moving out of a 1200 sq. ft., three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom house into a 900-ish sq. ft., two bedroom, two bathroom apartment (awaiting final confirmation).

Still bigger than I wanted, but significantly cheaper and almost 300 sq. ft. smaller.

As I’ve been decluttering over the last almost-year (stalled for the last few months), I’ve struggled mightily with the conflict of organization vs. convenience. For instance, in my new, smaller office, I have all my office supplies in two small bins that fit on the shelf above the desk. Nothing overflows and I have exactly what I need.

But getting out a pen is annoying. So is fishing out tape.

Not prohibitive enough to break my organization system, but noticeable.

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Cell Phones: Going Prepaid?

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So, I have this iWone 3G. Greg has one, too. It’s something of a boat anchor these days, now that the novelty has worn off (it’s been about a year and a half).

I’m not an iPhone gamer. I don’t really use social networking stuff (Hootsuite) on it except on rare occasions. Email is only for reference rather than composition. It is my primary camera at the moment, sadly, since my real one won’t hold a charge on fresh batteries.

So what do I use it for? Contacts, calendar, phone calls, static music, and Pandora. The first two come from our good friend Uncle Google. The last two are definitely “wants” rather than “needs”.

I’d say making phone calls is a requirement.

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Stereo Reduction

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One of my latest home pet peeves is my stereo. I’ve got a nice, old-skool 5.1 setups (sans a subwoofer)… which means that my living room is chock full of cables.

As I clear out things like the broken desk chair that’s been in our living room for a year and a half, more speaker cables are exposed. Fugly eye sore. I like my sound system–I’ve had it for over a decade now (mostly). The receiver is an old Harman Kardon AVR 110, and despite predating component inputs (much less HDMI), it sounds beautiful when I use optical/coax audio.

In addition to the eye sore of the speaker cables, though, I’m also finding myself with fewer and fewer components. My massive 200-CD player died a while ago, and all my music is digitized now, disks stashed. I also don’t really listen to music in the living room anymore–headphones work better for dishwashing and general chilling.

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