Deleting the Cat

So ATAD (A Thing a Day) is all about removing clutter from one's life in the pursuit of simplification, right? One of today's things was removing Carol the cat from the Wii Fit Plus screen. It would remind me every so often that it has been a long time since she had done a weigh-in (to which I'd respond "that's because she's dead" to Lori's chagrin) and the Wii would also remind me on her birthday making me sad.

Shot

Anyone who's read this blog for any length of time knows that I desire a simpler life than the one I have.  There are many parts I cannot change, but one area I can change is clutter.  There was a time when I thought I was going to be single my whole life.  I had often wondered if I could make do with a van and a gym membership.  But I had a cat and I still believed I'd find someone, so I opted against that lifestyle.  Plus, it would have been harder back then - phones were big, clunky with limited batteries and you couldn't watch TV on them.  Wireless data plans and cell phone charging were hard to come by and there were far fewer 24-hour Wal*Marts where you could park overnight to have access to a bathroom.  

Anyhow, back to my point... uncluttering... I don't know why, but the other day the thought popped into my head "If there was a fire, what would I grab?"  Certainly, the family and the cat, but what kinds of stuff would I grab?  There's a tall dresser in our room that has a few of Lori's collectibles and then a bunch of mine: a few wooden train cars and a who bunch of shot glasses.

I used to collect them when I went on trips.  Now, to look at them, I just shake my head and wonder what was I thinking.  Here's a bunch of simple pieces of glass with something painted on them, made in China and then horrendously marked up.  

This comic ("How to Learn About Someone by Examining Their Possessions," Basic Instructions, 2013-02-28) didn't help.  Well, maybe it did.  

A Thing a Day 23

Day 23 - Life is Gone for these dead ringers

Here's some really old phones.  They've been sitting in the donate pile in the garage not donating themselves.  But they have a new plan at work where you can send them to someone and they get donated, sold and then international calling cards are purchased and sent to U.S.* troops serving overseas.

There is just something fun about dropping phones into interoffice envelopes.  Feels matrixy.

(*Happy, Robin?)

A Thing a Day 22

Day 22 - Day's Grown Dark for this Lamp

I'm glad I didn't call this "A Thing Every Day" when I started.  :)

You probably recognize this lamp.  Back in college, everyone had at least one of these lamps.  Over the years, I've owned a number of these.  In the early days, these 300 or 500w halogen fixtures caused all kinds of fires.  Over time, they added protective covers on top and tip sensors on the bottom.  But they managed to keep the price at $15.  Was a great deal.

These were truly disposable appliances.  It seemed like the first thing to go was the dimmer switch.  Easy enough, you would just twist it open, cut the power into and out of the switch and with a few wire nuts and an external dimmer switch, voila, good as new.

But then eventually, it would die for real.   Again, easy, untwist all the pieces, cut all the power cords, fits very compactly in the trash and you go out and buy a few more from Fred Meyer or Home Depot.

So, this is one that did finally die and then sat in the corner for months.  But now it's finally gone.

A Thing a Day 21

Day 21 - Packing it in

I got this computer bag from StaplesMaxDepot many years ago and it's served me well.  But really, I have no need for it.

We moved to new desks a few weeks ago and somehow, I've become the quartermaster for our combined team of like 40 people.  There is constantly people bringing me old laptops or coming to borrow a laptop or a power cord or monitor or whatever.  Whatever you need, I got it.

Anyhow, yesterday someone was looking for a computer bag.  Since I'm not using this one (they gave me a better one at this job) and it's just wasting space at home, I'll take it to work and donate it to the equipment cabinet so someone else can make use of it.

A Thing a Day 20

Day 20 - Old Phone, Meet New Phone

From 1998-2001 and 2006-2010, I carried a Blackberry for work and a personal cell phone.  The Blackberry had come a long way in that time, but then one day a small computer company bolted a phone onto its music player and the writing was on the wall.  Our company is not on the cutting-edge. (We're still on Windows XP... we just got SP3 last week!)

But they switched off T-Mobile and we'd all need to select new phones.  Did I want another Blackberry or an iPhone?

I actually agonized a little bit about the choice.  Having used an iPod Touch for a few months, I knew the on-screen keyboard was a pain.  (I still struggle with it, I'm not nearly as proficient with it as I am with a Blackberry keyboard.)  But in the end, it was really a no-brainer.

And as soon as I had my iPhone, it was pretty obvious... it was silly to carry two phones.  I could give up my phone and sign-up for a small payroll deduction.  Because we had a family plan, it was probably about the same, but not having to carry two devices was nice.  (I still carry a separate iPod, that's a little harder to give up.  At one time, this also played iTunes, but for some reason it eventually just stopped - would just skip skip skip without actually play any songs.)

Of course, I can't figure out the master code, so I could do a master reset - I had to delete all the phone numbers by hand and anything else I could find.  Only thing left are some extra ring tones.

I'll drop this phone in an interoffice envelope tomorrow and it'll wing itself across the campus to someone who will take it send it off to a charity that refurbishes or sells the phone for the purposes of making free phones or free phone cards available to soldiers serving overseas.

A Thing a Day 19

Sadly, I could probably do this every day.  You'd find that boring and so would I.   But truth be told, I've been a little bit busy lately, so haven't had time to really look into the deep areas where clutter hides.  I might have to take a break (already?) and then do a bunch all at once over a weekend or something.   But here's more mail and magazines and notices of company mergers and stuff.

A Thing a Day 18

Day 18 - Step Off

This is a foot thing.  It has suction cups on the bottom and it goes in your shower.  On top, it has little semi-rigid plasticy rubber bits positioned in circles.

So you're supposed to rub your foot (just your right foot?) on it and I guess it's supposed to feel good or something?

It was in my stocking (a gift from someone who doesn't know me really well but made me a stocking anyhow) at Christmas time and we dropped it into the bathtub.

And there it lay, unused.  So I yanked it out threw it in the trash.

A Thing a Day 17

Day 17 - Paging the Sierra Club

In order to stop clutter and (so we thought) avoid junk mail, we got a post office box.  I only check it once a week.  And then I drop everything on the passenger seat of my car until I can deal with it.  So... minus magazines, this is one week's worth.

At work, our copiers can capture pages to files, so I scanned in and emailed some stuff to Lori, other stuff I just dropped in the shredder.  Other stuff I removed our address part, dropped that in the shredder and the rest into the recycling bin.

I guess a lot of this mail we "deserve" - medical summaries, coupons from a place we shop, places we've donated.  However, no interest in the election flyers.  By the time they'd arrived, I'd already voted anyhow.

A Thing a Day 16

Day 16 - The nightmare under the counter

Under the counter in the bathroom, we've kind of each staked out a side.  I have this blue caddy and a bunch of stuff that was in it and a bunch of stuff that was piled around it.

And, really, a lot of stuff didn't belong there.  Sock rings?  A small flashlight that casts a large oval with the bat signal in the middle?  Lots of tiny toothpastes?  Loose, clean, q-tips?

So I dumped out everything, tossed the q-tips, opened one of the toothrushes and replaced my existing one, took the other toothbrushes, the tiny toothpastes, the unopened boxes of floss, an extra toothbrush older, etc. and put them into the bin in the other bathroom with extra toothbrushes and floss and stuff.  Ditto the small roll of emergency toilet paper that was part of a gag gift years ago that I tossed under there.

Threw out some more stuff, cleaned the bin (it was grungy) and put back ony what I needed.   It's nice to see only what I really need.

There is still a number of colognes and aftershaves that my wife's given me over the years.  Maybe I should wear that stuff more often.

No shaving stuff in here, it's in a different bathroom.

The Batman flashlight went into my nightstand drawer (which I cleaned recently) but I should figure out how to get rid of it.  It has no value, but it's kinda cool.

A Thing a Day 15

Day 15 - You will have less clutter in your future

There, up in the top rack of the nice cabinets with the glass fronts, a set of wine glasses, two of them full of little useless slips of paper.

What are those slips of paper?  Years worth of fortunes from Panda Express.  Why?

Not really sure.  At one point, were sticking fun ones between the glass and the wood in the cabinet doors themselves, but it started to look cluttered.

So they migrated up to the wine glasses.  When they should have instead gone to the recycling bin.  Which they finally did today.

I wonder if the wine glasses, too, ought to find a new home.

A Thing a Day 14

Day 14 - Another stack of magazines

I think I've been able to make myself blind to magazines.  They're everywhere.

Every so often I subscribe to Architectural Digest and then I let it lapse for a few years.  I have a large stack on my bookcase.  They're thick, so it doesn't mean there's a lot of them.

But I like to go through them and cut out things I like, just in case someday I'll be able to build a house or do some redesigning here.   So that takes some time.

I went through four today.  I also pulled out some other magazines that I really didn't have an interest in reading and some I had read but never managed to get to the recycling bin.   I suspect that even with my minimal cutting there are some people who would love to get the AD hand-me-downs, but that's still too much work.

One magazine had four articles that I thought were worth sharing, I'll have them in one or more future "What I'm Reading" posts.

A Thing a Day 13

Day 13 - The horror

I would consider today's ATAD a partial failure.

So when I do my freestep on the Wii Fit, I like to use the laptop at the same time.  So I have two empty cat litter containers stacked on top of the coffee table and the laptop sits nicely on top of that.

Only one of the containers isn't empty. In my writing, it says "To Sort.  Filled Jan. 1, 2009."

I would like to say that I tossed the entire contents directly into the trash, I mean, it's been almost two years and apparently nothing in there has been needed.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do that.

A Thing a Day 12

Day 12 - Computery stuff

The computer cables box wasn't as bad as I expected.  I unwrapped everything and realized... yeah, an over-abundance of USB cables.

And what's this?  A wall-mount plate for an old-school telephone, with a DSL filter built in.

I kept one of each type of USB cable (there are plenty of others already attached to devices around the house), the Firewire cable, the extra analog monitor cable, the very old-school parallel-to-serial cable (might be worth something) and the network cables.

Wasn't as much, but I did drop a few more cables into the donate pile in the garage.  (Rules are that I can collect stuff to donate, but I need to actually donate before the end of the month or throw in trash.)

A Thing a Day 11

Day 11 - Devil in the Blue Plastic Cladding

Dear Dirt Devil Vacuum,

You suck.  Well, not functionally.  I mean that at as a criticism of your actual ability to do same.  Which isn't so good anymore.

And you don't stand up anymore.  And you're big and loud.

You served us well for over 10 years in 2 apartments and 2 houses.

But now you've been replaced.  Why are you still here?

Buh-bye.

A Thing a Day 10

Day 10 - Audio/video cables

This wasn't the absolute mess I expected.  I have a few other boxes (computer cables, power cabling) that are probably worse.

This is a box I keep under the counter in the laundry containing audio and video cabling.  Mostly RCA and a few coax.

Now... Everything in our house that needs to be connected is, so these are all extras.  One or two might belong to a still or video camera, but for the most part, this is all somewhat extraneous.

I probably split the pile in half.  I opened any cabling still in plastic bags and discarded the bags.

Dropped any 2-cord RCA, dropped the cheaper looking or shorter 3-cord RCAs, dropped any really short coax cables, the old computer microphone, those awful iPod headphones.  That's all now in the recycling box.

Put the rest back in the box for any special times when I might need extra cabling, like if we have another Superbowl party and Corey brings over his projector or something.  (Though Corey's also got a great kit of his own.)

A Thing a Day 9

Day 9 - The driver's seat

Tonight, I took a look in my car - areas I can reach while driving where stuff might end up -- the center console, the door handle well, the door pocket, the ash tray and the small storage (music player?) spot below the radio.

The last two were empty.  The ash tray's always open because I have an adapter plugged into the cigarette lighter.  Actually, I have two - one for the iPod and a second one for the iPhone.  I was surprised not to find anything in the ash tray.  The small storage area was empty because I usually keep the iPod in there when driving.

The door pocket yielded some interesting stuff... compact umbrella (went back), plastic bags (repacked more compactly), garage door opener (returned, natch) and outdated proof-of-insurance (burn bin).

The door handle well had a pack of gum (went back) and some pens (relocated to center console).

The center console had the most stuff... an old GPS (went back in for now), a compass (didn't seem to work, tossed), the cap to a water bottle (temporarily relocated to kitchen.  If I don't find the water bottle in the next few days, I'll toss it.  That will be the surest way to find the water bottle.), a packet of splenda (tossed), more pens (overall, kept three total), hairbrush (probably unnecessary? went back in for now), flashlight, some sticky bumps (used to hold Blackberry in place on dash while driving.  No longer necessary, into the house for now), an old Dilbert (Dogbert is advising the big boss (the CEO) that if he wants to help the environment he needs to ram hybrids with his SUV so they'll stop using gas altogether... anyhow, recycling bin), some money (bank), outdated registration (burn bin) and a CD case (back in - my favorite CD is in the player, in case I find myself in the car without any music players - nearly impossible, but you never know) and some random trash (trash).  And a pressure gauge still in its wrapper.  Threw the wrapper away and put the gauge back in.

I actually added to the center console - several sheets of paper.  A few months ago when that bozo hit me, all I had was a few Dilbert cartoons to write her info on.

I'll tackle the glove box at another time.  I suspect that all I'll find there is outdated receipts for tires and brake work and oil changes.

A Thing a Day 8

Day 8 - But you'll need me... someday!

This isn't the whole collection, I saved some of the newer ones, like the digital cameras (we had bought one and then I won one) and the Blu-Ray, but in time, I'm sure they'll grace these pages as well.

We're always taught to save boxes, that we may need them someday.  But there needs to be a statute of limitations.

A Thing a Day 7

Day 7 - Calling up the interwebs

This would appear to be an ancient modem for doing dial-up to the internet.  This has absolutely no value and into the trash it goes.

I suspect that I'm probably supposed to recycle this. Or give it to a museum or something. Sorry.

A Thing a Day 6

Day 6 - Incomplete medical records for a pet
thar's no longer with us

Well now... what do we have here?

I dove into the file cabinet for this one.  Yes, it's some medical records (certainly by far not all of them) for an animal that's passed away, my friend Carol.