Tag / Clutter

by clumpaday

Kinky Boots

Clump #68: Start blasting through shoe snarl in bedroom.

I’m ashamed to admit that, until yesterday, I still hadn’t confronted the horrible accumulation of old, nasty junk in our bedroom, after having vowed to do so in a (much) earlier post.  But this blog is not about perfection. Otherwise, I would not still be clumping and writing.  Slip-ups are inevitable.  Sometimes the clutter-accumulation phenomenon defies all logic.  Getting back on track without too much judgement or self-recrimination is what I’m focused on, because it keeps the job going.

I saw this plaque at a friend’s house.  I could amend it by saying: Never Let Yesterday Fill Up Today.

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And here they are: soles of beloved souls from many yesterdays:

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One somewhat logical reason to put off going through all this stuff is that most of the shoes and boots belong to my daughters.  We’ve talked about “doing the shoes” many times, even possibly from a distance on Skype. But it finally came to pass on the very rare and precious day when they were both home together.

We discovered that the only item belonging to my younger daughter were these rainbow boots.  She put them in her closet.  What a novel idea!

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My older daughter will keep these funky boots we found at the Goodwill long ago when searching for costume material for a summer theater production of Sweet Charity.  They lived on for Halloween and other funky occasions, and might still be treasured for more.

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Goodbye to Senior Prom shoes.  (Sob)

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Keep:

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Give away:

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I’m hoping someone else will find the Goodwill a sweet charity for their fancy footwear.

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by clumpaday

Enduring Memory

Clump #50: Take donations to Goodwill, LensCrafters, and Best Buy.

Another old family photo featuring my dad, in honor of his birthday week and my effort to clean out the room housing many of his things.

The photo below features three of his four daughters; one more was yet to come.  I’m in the middle.  Looking at the picture in this resolution, I’m guessing that’s not a pacifier in my mouth, but a smear of food. Time to get out the camera.  My dad would laugh remembering how he’d always hit his head on the corner of the cabinet above him in this crowded house.  The good old days!

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Here is a hunk of junk I managed to get out of our crowded house today.  My husband added a pile of old t-shirts to the Goodwill load, saying we’re becoming “Clumpaholics.”  Funny guy!   The Joe Jitters shirt from Moose Lake, MN, on top, was hard for me to part with … so many good memories.   Somebody  help me — I’m drowning in sentiment.

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I took seven pairs of old glasses that had belonged to my parents to a LensCrafters/Lions Club drop-off.

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That felt very good.

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I also took my father’s computer hard drive to Best Buy, where they kindly took out the disk for me, to recycle the rest.  They’re not allowed to clean or destroy the disk, for liability reasons.

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Here’s the part I must now destroy.  The sales clerk/geek squad member recommended drilling a hole in it somewhere around the large rounded area.  Or bashing it with a hammer.  What have we created here?  The world simply baffles me.

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Back, for a moment, to the post entitled Back to the Garden.  I was made aware by one of my readers that I was not clear in my description of something I learned at an iPhone photography class at Longwood Gardens in Kennet Square, PA. Here is the correct description: the volume up button on an iPhone can be used as a shutter (not the top on/off button), and tends to be more stable than tapping the camera icon.

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Another good tip: the teacher recommended avoiding use of the zoom-in feature on the iPhone camera.  Better to use the normal setting and manipulate it later (zooming in, cropping) for image clarity/quality.

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by clumpaday

Excuse Me While I Kiss The Sky

Clump #44:  Give away cushions and throw away bags.

Thank you to Jimi Hendrix and the song Purple Haze for the title of this post.  Another day of confronting a clump of stuff that had been moved out of my father’s last apartment into one of our rooms.  This room, the study, has become a black hole, sucking in all manner of clutter. (Ahem, I, of course, have had nothing at all to do with it.)

First, something I should have done long ago.  These bags were from the funeral home we used when my father passed away last year. Today I gave myself permission to throw them away, not give them away.  What a relief.

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Next, I put together an assortment of pillows to give away.  I’d given the one with needlepointed pansies to my mom at some point.  She has always been a big fan of pansies and often remarked about how much she liked it.  I will bring it back to her.

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My mom’s affection for pansies must have rubbed off on me.  I took this photo of two of them with a petunia during pansy season this spring. (Doesn’t the one on the right look like a cat face?)

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Perhaps I had pillows on the brain, but I couldn’t get over the sky today … like thick down.  I almost wanted to stop people on the street and exclaim about it.  Magnificent.  I guess I did need to get out!

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by clumpaday

Giving and Receiving

Clump #24:  Bring bag of clothes to Goodwill.

In the same way I had (past tense!) a hidden to-do list under the layer of clutter on my bureau, there is a subliminal to-do list on our bedroom floor.  I have returned the articles of clothing in this bag a million times … in my head!  They were purchased for my older daughter.  Since she lives far away, it took a while for her to try them on and decide that they weren’t right.  So much time elapsing … and elapsing, and elapsing. The image of finally returning them, and the embarrassment of having to own up to the date on the receipt, was keeping the job in the stuck zone.  I finally mustered up my courage, and then realized the receipt I had put in the bag was not even for those items!!  To the Goodwill they go, with the much happier image of someone being ecstatic about finding such great, new items, with their tags still on.  Another little bit of mental noise (nagging) has been silenced in our place of rest.

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Confession: I don’t usually get a receipt when I donate items to the Goodwill.  At the point of release, I’m often so disgusted with the items, I feel I should offer to pay Goodwill something for taking them.  This time I knew exactly how much they were worth, got a receipt, and filed it in this year’s tax folder.

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Here’s the back of the receipt.  I hope my donation is a force for positive change in someone’s life.  The act of giving away has already been one for me.

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In the spirit of giving and receiving, and to brighten up the post, I offer this photo of an arrangement of flowers.  My son and I were eating at a pizza restaurant on his recent winter break.  A woman from a nearby florist shop came in with arrangements of flowers to advertise her business on the restaurant’s tables.  She asked us, “Would you mind if I put this on your table?”  What a question!  “I would mind if you didn’t!”

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