Thursday, December 01, 2016

Germs and Cleaning.

I think it’s safe to come out… I hope.  After being off and on for nearly a month, I thought I’d whipped the problem.  Grandma passed away, and I went to the funeral.

Aaaand, promptly got sick again.

Yay…

Finally crawling out of the whole sneeze, blow nose, cough violently, repeat nonsense… For now.  I am, in fact, spraying hands, and anything that doesn’t move, with a little anti-germy spray I carry in my purse.  At the rate I’d been going, I was tempted to put an extra-large can of Lysol, but it wouldn’t fit…

AT THE MOMENT, the creeping crud seems to be away.  I am now in the “okay, healthy, now I need to get a flu shot, hopefully preventing further interruptions to my doings.”

I will be getting this maybe the end of the week, or the start of next, depending on when Husband and I get our respective derrieres in to get them, (or arms. Whatever.).  He and I like to go together, moral support, I guess.

It’s really odd, the place we get them is a store, but the room is kinda creepy, it’s a little closed off space, no windows, painted totally white, with this odd little yellow-orange floral chair.  A small desk by it, with the shots, and a wheeled stool for the pharmacist.  (I say pharmacist, as we go to a local store to get them.  I’ve no idea if the gal has any other letters after her name...) Anyway, it is a room that really could almost double for some of those interrogation rooms in spy movies.  But, it works, so I try not to think about it… Too much.

And as you’ve no doubt noticed, I haven’t blogged.  I needed to make a place for my computer.  And now, I have!  I have a nice desk now, in my now somewhat-in-progress-but-it-is-finally-usable-and-I-can-see-the-floor-again craft room.  When Grandma died, she had a desk in her room.  I remember it from when she lived in her old house.  I’d thought it was nice, but that was about it.  Well, no one in the family wanted it.  I had a desk in my craft room, but it was sort of rough, and it was… Um.  I’d had it since college, and it was starting to come apart in spots, and it was just not working well for me.  So I asked for the desk, and the family was more or less like, Oh, THANK G*D, TAKE IT!!!

Shall we say, cleaning out my Grandmother’s things was a bit of a challenge?  Finding homes for things was even more so!  Between being a hoarder, and a child of the Depression, we were finding crap scraps and bits that we really couldn’t fathom why were kept.  Anyone want every rubber band from all the things she ever had a rubber band on?  Some were quite brittle, she’d had them so long, some even broken, and tied back again.  She had tiny bits of paper with, I am assuming, pictures or notes she wanted.  But I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that she had hundreds of them in the desk.  We were trying to make sure she hadn’t put unpaid bills, or conversely, money in, as well, so it was a long task.  But finally, it was cleaned out, and I brought it home.  Or more accurately, Husband brought it home, and we dug out a space for it in the craft room.

That’s when I took a good long look at my craft room.

Oh... Dear...

I wasn’t seeing much difference there, than I was at Grandma’s!  Yoiks!!  And so, swallowing hard, I decided that was not what I wanted to see when I came into this room.  I have pack rat tendencies, but I can dump things when I want to.

And boy, after that, did I want to!

So, after getting healthy enough to do something, I started “digging out”.  I separated into basic piles.

1.  Want to keep, will use soon, put away.
2.  Don’t want, but still usable, donate.
3.  What the @#$% is this?  Either trash, or recycle for use in some other project.
4.  Junk, no value, just dump.

I was surprised that I had a bit more of #4 than I expected, but quite a bit was #2.  (About 4 or 5 big bags worth so far.)  After one meltdown, Husband realized I was ready to get his backhoe out and start cleaning the room.  Basically bashing the wall down and scraping everything out…  He decided to get involved.

I had tried desperately to clean as I went, but because of the way I had set up the room, I was just managing to make a batch of x, put it in a pile, which would allow me to get behind and clean out stuff, which would mean I would have to separate, and this made a new pile, or three.

This lead to my having no space, and lots of little bits and pieces.  Basically, from a large geologically layered mess, to a series of small explosions. (Or, less charitably, random cow pies. Take your pick.)  After Husband strong-armed the table, and helped me move a few boxes, and finally get boxes up on my shelves, I found the floor, and the boxes, (now LABELLED, so I have a clue what I have up there), I have room to separate and put things away.  He also recommended putting cones of yarn that I use up on a shelf, rather than on a spinning rack, which did not do much but take lots of space on the floor, as well as blocking my bookshelves.

I am getting the thought that I will clean the closet, and a couple other ‘junk’ spaces this way, as well.  After I get this monster down to size.  I am still working on it, but now it’s more little stuff that I need to sort out, not this monster pile ‘o stuff.

I was a bit amazed how many projects I had started, then put in my craft room. Not in Area 51, but just on my table.  That meant I had a table full of stuff, and didn’t have use of the table.  Now I have all the Un Finished Objects in boxes, and in Area 51.  If I didn’t want to do them, or in a couple cases, wondered what it was that I was making (only 2, but gah?  What IS that thing???) I undid the project, rewound the yarn, and put it away.  I now have at least 5 to 8 more points of  R factor insulation on one side of my room.

I also made myself a limit.  I have only 2 to three projects out at a time, (one for travel, like socks, and one or two for home), so I won’t have all the big mounds of stuff squirreled away here and there.  And looking at the 3 shelves of projects, I am to start NO new projects until I finish some of those.  (Only exception is for presents, such as baby blankets for family… However, since I have so far found at least 3 unfinished ones, that shouldn’t be a huge problem, either. Sigh…)

I have a bunch of unfinished teddy bears that I have stored for some time.  A gal said she would take them on a missions trip, then backed out when I called to confirm how many she wanted.  So I ended up with a batch of bears and no takers.  I have recently checked with a friend, that knows a motorcycle charity group, and they were thrilled to take them.  Sooooo, now I will have a “get the bears finished” session, and I will have yet MORE room, plus, some little kids will have new bears for Christmas.  Yaaaay!

Thusly, I think I have mostly caught you up with my last couple weeks.  Oh, and I cleaned out the garden, as we are going to have our first frost, so says the weather folks.  Most of the garden had been cleaned out, but I had carrots and beets left.  The carrots were fine, the beets… Uh, well, it’s a very good thing I was going to use them for natural dyes, let’s just leave it at that. Ew…

Not going to promise anything, at this point, but being on the healthy list again, having a real spot to use the computer again, and having cut down a lot on volunteer ‘stuff’, so I have some “me” time, you might even see blogs again, in less than blue moon increments! (Cross fingers!)

And with the computer where I can access it easily again, maybe you will see me stalking visiting your blogs, again, too!  And maybe even commenting! Will wonders never cease...

3 comments:

messymimi said...

Please accept my sincere condolences for the loss of your grandmother. It doesn't matter how "ready' we think we are for such a thing, it still hurts and it's hard.

You will be in my prayers for good health.

Congratulations on all of the usable space and organizing getting done!

Sharon said...

At the other house, my sewing room went from sewing room to craft room, and then to the glass room. Eventually it became my junk room, literally like a dump. Congrats on the clean-up!

stephen Hayes said...

My condolences for the loss of your grandmother. Take care.