New To Do List 8/14/17

 

Get at least one piece of one item off of the long-term list!

SHORT TERM:

• Replace the north/south doors. (They’ve been ordered, will be delivered tomorrow.)
• Work on the websites.
• Prime & paint the removed clapboards from the laundry wall where the new door will be installed. (Priming has been in process since last Friday.)
• Get the nailers up so the guys can finish up the trim. Monday
• Get the clapboards painted? Started Monday
• Paint the rest of the exterior of the house next to the porch.
• Get the clapboards reinstalled.
• Finish filling in the holes caused by the construction. Wednesday
• Finish edging the “rain garden”.
• Fill the bagster
• Order gravel.
• Order wood.

MEDIUM TERM: (in the next 2-3 weeks)

• Empty the old coffee table full o’ stuff in the hallway.
• Resolve the “too many” coffee tables dilemma.
• Remove the “island” of boxes of stuff from the attic. Sell, donate, or trash enough that the floor can stay cleared.
• Put food away for winter.
• The fridge freezer needs to be organized and purged. Started Mondaty
• Clean the fridge’s shelves.
• Paint the laundry room, inside and out.
• Paint the bathroom.
• Get the new shower curtain liner painted and installed.
• Get through more of the accounting backlog.
• Get last year’s unfinished clean up done in the entry/living room/hall.
• Get the marble table out of the kitchen and to the antique booth. [Called the person who had indicated he’d help me get it to the shop.]

LONG TERM & ONGOING:

• Get a job.
• Pay off the equity line.
• Continue to use up the stored foods: grains, beans, pasta, etc. (The canned goods purge the end of last year beginning of this year worked.)
• Rebuild the winter pantry.
• Writing Projects: Memoir
• Writing Projects: Article
• Writing Projects: Kitchen Book
• Writing Projects: Novel

Getting It Gone

Since last summer, I’ve sold our old dining room table, the bookcase which was in the hall, the oak stand which was in the entry and one of two Hoosier cabinets. Still to sell: a double dresser, a marble/wrought iron table, at least one coffee table.

I acquired on a sale rack at a home center not too long ago two jars of paint in “modern finish” (high gloss) in black and white. I also got a high gloss liquid wax which does the same thing, but it’s clear. This morning I cleaned the black strap steel shelves in the hall then lightly coated them with some of the black paint to spiff them up. I didn’t “paint’ them, I used the paint as a “buff.” Worked. It was what I had in mind when I acquired the paint. Black metal looks dingy after a while and cleaning it doesn’t get it looking as good as I’d like.  In the process, a lot of things were put in the car to go to the antique store.

Yesterday I started cleaning out the shed; we both worked on it in the evening. There’s a lot less stuff in there (much of it is in the car for the booth) and we generated 2 bags of trash. If the roof project was finished, we would have set up the bagster we got a while back. That will happen soon.

There is still the storage IN the shed: all the items on the 2 platforms (it’s like a bunk bed) and two shelf units. When we get those cleaned out/cleared/modded and then the stuff we’re keeping stored the way we have planned, the shed will be much more efficient and easier to use!

Today

They’re putting the new rafters in place. I’m cleaning out the shed.

There are a few obvious “go to the dump” pieces: a broken-down particle board bookcase I bought when I had the store. The ones which were put together were disposed of long, long ago. This pile of boards has been in the shed since something like 2001! It’s going today.

When we bought the house, the kitchen lights were fluorescents with a plastic grid hiding them. One of those grids (or more?) are in the shed too. I don’t know how long the grid has been in the shed, but we’ve had the house > 20 years now, so the thing has been in our space at least that long. It could have been an extra stored in the shed when we bought the place, or it could have been moved there when we replaced the lights. I don’t know — and I don’t care. It’s going away.

About 5 (?) years ago, at auction, we bought 2 single-pane sidelights. We have the better of the two installed in the new kitchen wall. (Partially replacing the two windows we removed from there last summer.)  I had the idea we might use the 2nd sidelight on the shed itself, but this morning DH said to get rid of it, so it’s going!

At one point the contractor asked if we had any 8 penny nails? I didn’t know, but there was a peanut butter jar with a few huge (he said they were 10 penny nails) in it and I gave it to him. Told him NOT to return the jar or any he didn’t use. One more item gone!

I need to get back to the shed clean out so I can actually FINISH today, preferably this morning. (I’d like to go to the antique store this afternoon and maybe run a few errands too!)

Mundane, necessary, and productive: my day so far. Not too bad!

I won’t get this done this morning. For one thing, it’s noon. For another, the dump doesn’t open ’til 1:00!

Stuff Reduction

What I’ve done this morning:

• I waxed the edges of the new desk with beeswax to help the piece run smoothly.
• I washed down two exterior walls which because of the way the roof was originally built were really dirty. These two walls now have a concrete floor, in the patio, so there should be a lot less asst. dirt, leaves, etc. to crud them up.
• I decided to sell my espionage paperbacks as a lot. I like them, I even every now and then look through or read a book or two, but not enough to justify the nearly 4 linear feet the collection needs. I can use the $20 more than the nearly 40 books.
• Then I got a new container for and culled the vegetable seed collection.
• I ate breakfast.

It’s about 11:45 a.m. and I haven’t done anything this morning at all ‘eh?

Overwhelmed Gadfly

Basically, I took about a week off. I had so many things to do, endlessly that I just got completely overwhelmed. When I took a day off to go to a party, I just didn’t start again the next day — last Monday.

Being lazy and unproductive hasn’t helped getting anything done, but it has lowered my stress.

Anyway, the result is that I still have an overwhelming “to do” list.

1.  Deal with food, both home grown and from the CSA.
2. Clean/cull the house.
3. The construction is on-going because we’ve had so much rain. The two week job has become a 4 week job. Hopefully, it will be finished this week, oh, wait, there’s a holiday — next week, sigh.
4. Yard work.
5. Writing.
6. House Decorating.

None of these are single item, do it in an hour jobs. They are on-going, long-term, intensive and have many pieces.

Food:

1. Summer squash (from the CSA) is currently in the dehydrator. Finished. A new batch started.
2. The latest batch of rhubarb is chopped on the cutting board. I need to figure out what I’m going to do with it. Froze it.
3. I have the rest of last week’s food from the CSA to deal with. Need to figure a rough menu for between now and Wednesday and deal with the rest. Thursday we get more. No menu, but in process of using up and/or deciding to store the excess.
4. One way I deal with food is to freeze it. I need to make a new inventory. What I have is completely out of date. In process.

Clean/Cull the House:

1. I’d love to take a chunk o’ stuff out of the house, put it on the lawn and go through it. I may, if I have time today. But having time is strictly deciding that I’m going to do this rather than something else.
2. I still have about 3 or 4 batches of laundry to do. I may break down and go to the laundromat in town to get them done, maybe. There are many places I could find enough “stuff” to make this worth doing: the living room, the kitchen, the attic, our bedroom, the office.
3. Keep working on the “dump” areas: my office and the attic. My idea with this is that if I get these cleared out then I can move some of the excess stuff from the other rooms there. Especially the attic, as that’s what it’s for — right? [Started working to clear out one of the two sheds. The sheds are the outdoor “attics” and they need to be culled and cleaned as well.]

Construction:

1. Most of this isn’t on me, but they’ve unearthed a lot of rocks and I want to use them elsewhere in the garden. They’ve also covered over a lot of bulbs and they need to be moved to the bulb bed before they’re all dead. In process.
2. Finally, the big equipment moving across the space did in my stepping stones and the wildflowers I was trying to cultivate as ground cover. This area when they finish will need to be relandscaped.

Yard work:

1. I need to weed the veggie garden plot. I’m not growing much this year, but it doesn’t do to let the weeds get a firm hold on the space, ‘eh?
2. Finish distributing the old compost.
3. Add the new L to the compost heap and organize the leaf pile.
4. Make up the tutorial for and redo the kindling stand for next winter.

Writing:

1. Finish the memoir (again).
2. Write the new novel, at least a draft.
3. Finish the article for your friend.

House Decorating:

1. Get the shower curtain liner done.
2. Get the bookcase boxes painted, if they’re going to be.
3. Paint the stairs and baseboards in the living room.
4. Repaint the bathroom.
5. Move things in the hearth area as per the new design.
6. etc.

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First commentary added 7/4/2017. Includes all 4 food items, cleaning one of the sheds (partial), and moving some of the rocks.

Next Steps

So, it’s supposed to rain this afternoon, delaying the roof/patio project.

Here’s what’s new:

1. Worked on the attic. Pulled out 6 citronella candles which we’ll use on the porch if and when.
2. With help from DH stacked the drawer units in my office and got a top made for it. Needs to come down because of something we didn’t expect to be a problem, one more time, but at the moment, the drawer units have a top, there’s a “hole” in my office, the bookshelf I’m trying to empty has 2 empty shelves (on the stack and in the drawers).
3. A box of books was removed from the office yesterday and went to the flea market/antique store as was 3 rolls of wallpaper, which sold. There are 2 more boxes of books to remove from my office (well there’s more than that, but there’s 2 more egg boxes).
4. The attic got worked on Saturday. There’s enough room for the trunk in the kitchen to be put away there. I looked at things and decided I wanted to keep the trunk for sale (now in the storage) and take another to the dump, it’s in the worst shape and is currently full of mildewing clothes.(Ick!)
5. For a long time we’ve kept empty boxes for big ticket items. We’ve decided we’re going to limit this, which is good, as it’s just storing air, yes?
6. In the process of working on the trunks, I discovered why the Christmas cull was so easy last December (see here) there were TWO trunks of the stuff in the attic I didn’t touch, sigh. I’m not culling them right now. I have an “island” of stuff to get through in the middle of the attic first. After that, I’ll cull the things along the sides.
7. That said, I’ve already talked about the fact that I needed to cull china. I did. I need to do it again, probably at least 2 more times. There are pieces I’m not sure where they are. There are pieces which I don’t know if they’re really only the 2nd copy or the 5th? There’s at least 2 boxes of china, glass, and other kitchen stuff unaccounted for. When the missing pieces have been located, or given up as lost forever,  then I’ll do another china/glass kitchen cull. For example, the piece of furniture I call my “china cabinet” at the moment has < 10 items in it, not a single piece of china. Still too much in flux to do more than a really minor culling!
8. I have books in my car to give away. They were supposed to be gone last week, but didn’t make it because the car has been full of flea market stuff and the house has been chaos because of people working on the roof. I gave a magazine away yesterday, but that’s pretty much it.

New Antique Booth

The new booth has been a success. So far I’ve sold an enamel lamp shade, 3 canisters, a bowl and a coffee grinder. Roughly the same amount of money as I made last month at the old place. Hopefully, the trend will continue. (I sold a salt & pepper set after I left Sat.)

Because I moved in on 5/31, I got a small check. One day’s rent less the lamp = < $20, but hey a check is  CHECK!!!

Today the flea market was a bust, oh well. Next to no one showed up, customers or vendors. Happens sometimes!

DH and I dragged the empty black trunk out of my office tonight. I cleaned it. It's the trunk in the best condition of a batch of them I bought a few years ago. Most of the rest of them have gone away. There's a blue hobnailed one, which has a square top, that's in the attic. I think the one which used to hold Christmas decorations was taken to the swap shop. If not, it will go to the booth and maybe it will sell? If the other trunk isn't still in the attic, maybe I'll replace it with this one.

[The image is from images.google.com, the url originally was from ebay. This isn't my image or my trunk!]

Not sure yet.

It IS still in the attic and it has had the end of the Christmas decoration boxes in it. I thought I’d gotten rid of that trunk last December!!! Okay, it’s now empty. The few remaining things in it have been sorted into piles: going out/trash, going out/for sale, empty boxes to reuse, 3 small boxes of things to keep. All of the separate categories have been dealt with. When I get a chance (tomorrow) I will pull the trunk out of the attic and clean it, prepatory to taking it to the booth.

My main job tomorrow is to clear one side of the front stone wall, so that the work on our back roof can start on Weds. *grin*!!!

Busy, busy, busy…cull, cull, and cull some more!

J