Day 45-A Bit of This, A Bit of That

Today is a mish mash of things. I was going to stretch them out to multiple days but really I don’t need to do that. I have PLENTY of things to cover the rest of the days that this particular period of cleaning out will encompass.

PLENTY.OF.THINGS.

So today you just get a mish mash of things.

This box isn’t even my stuff. It is a box that is full of things that Shoe Queen is getting rid of. When we were preparing to put Chez Knit on the market a couple of years ago Shoe Queen had to clean out and put away things that were in her closet and in a wardrobe that sits in her room. She just sort of stuffed misc things into the boxes and I toted them to the basement and there they have sat for the last several years. But when she was home at Christmas time she went through the boxes, discarding some things, keeping others. This is the box of things that are being donated.

Thank goodness I found the totally good and working ipod Classic before I donated the box!! That was a very good afternoon.

Sorry the picture is a tad blurry. That is just sort of what my life is like some days. This little beauty used to sit on the counter with fruit in it. We have found that if we keep fruit on the counter we tend to grab that for a snack rather than something less healthy.

But this thing really is rather massively tall. I don’t even remember where I found it. But I have been using a different fruit holder that is a little less “statuesque” so I am culling this one from the herd.

 

Again with the blurry pictures! One would think that I wasn’t a photographer.

Yes, this is a box. A wooden box. I used to have a lot of these. I had them screwed to the wall of a guest bathroom at the last house. They had loads of tchatchke in them that gathered dust and looked country.

What was I thinking?

Most of the boxes are long gone and this one has been hanging around in the basement gathering dust down there. So it has gone bye bye.

Ahhhhhhh. I feel better.

Day 44-

The winter days grind slowly here at Chez Knit. The snow comes. The rain arrives and melts all the snow.

I continue to clean things out.

It may not look like much but all of these little items have been clogging up my winter wear basket. And so they must go to new and better homes where they will be appreciated.

The fuzzy little thing on the bottom is actually a scarf that I rescued from the parking lot at Wally Mart. It was all wet and bedraggled so I brought it home, washed it and it is as good as new.

Only it is fuzzy. And a shade of green that makes me look like a zombie on the set of The Walking Dead.

Then there is the fleece scarf and gloves. The scarf is too short and not as warm as my hand knit wool scarves. The gloves are DEFINITELY not as warm as my mittens. And those multi stripped mittens that are hiding in the pile?

What the heck was I thinking. There are actually TWO pair of them which makes me think that either I purchased them for the progeny. OR I inadvertently purchased them twice. I am not sure which thought is worse.

The other things that are going bye bye are my old knitted dish rags. I lovelovelove my cotton dish rags.

Did I tell you that I love them?

But these are getting a bit ratty. You can’t really see it on the picture but they have seen better days. So they are getting the gentle heave ho too.

But never fear….

I have knit a whole bunch of new ones AND managed to use up my stash of cotton yarn. Killing two birds with one stone.

I love it when these kinds of things turn out.

Day 43-I Am a Picture Hoarder

I might have mentioned before that I am a “belt and suspenders” kind of gal. I think through all the possibilities. I plan the escape route on the plane if I have to evacuate. I know where all the exits are.

I hoard every picture that I have ever had printed.

Boxes of them. Stacks of them.

There was a time, long ago, when I would actually take a roll of film to wherever it was that I had film developed. And always I would choose the “double prints” option because, you never knew when you might want to send a picture to the grandparents or use one for a project or something. And then I started scrapbooking and rather than selectively re-print some pictures I would have a moment of sheer madness and say,

Print them, print them ALL!

And then I would use about half of those prints and then put the rest in a box, all neatly organized by year. And then when I needed those pictures again….of course I wouldn’t actually look through the boxes. I would have them printed again.

Insert expensive dope slap here.

But I am slowly beginning to go through those boxes. To look, quickly, at the pictures and decide if I already have a copy of them in my carefully organized photo boxes that I AM using for scrapbooking.

Yesterday, while Nick the plumber was here replacing the ejection pump, I was busy ejecting pictures from the boxes. This pile represents pictures that I already have a copy of somewhere else. Or pictures that are blurry. Or pictures that just aren’t right.

I was going to scan some of them to show you but then I would just end up saving an electronic copy of pictures that I don’t want to keep anyways.

And that would sort of defeat the purpose of the whole clean out thing.

Trust me, I am scanning in a BOAT LOAD of pictures every day and some of them are doozies. I am sure I will show them to you at some point.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Look OUT! It is a photo avalanche.

Day 42–The Decorations Keep On Comin’

Here we are, the middle of January…

And I am still dealing with getting rid of Christmas decorations. I promise that this will be the last post. I hope. But this one almost didn’t happen. I almost chickened out and put it back in the box.

Even though I haven’t put it out in a boat load of years.

Even though there are issues.

You see, there is a story attached. Like THAT is a surprise.

Yes, that is a white picket fence. You might be asking yourself why it is in with the Christmas decorations. Well…..I used to have this miniature Christmas tree that I would set up on a table. And it had it’s own little decorations and it’s own little lights and it’s own little tree skirt. And I even made decorative “gifts” that went under it every year. And my Auntie Jane decided that what I needed to make the thing complete was a white picket fence to go around it. So she made me one.

And I have used it for many years. But it has had some hard use and been dropped here and there and…..

Well, it got dropped one too many times. I am sure that I could fix it if I really had to but I have decided instead to let it go. I no longer have the tree that it went around nor the ornaments for said tree. So it is time for the final goodbye.

But if I had to I could make one for myself.

But I am not going to. I will just remember this one with great fondness.

Day 41-Mr. Monkey

There was a time, here at Chez Knit, when we had a wealth of stuffed animals.

A plethora.

An overflowing abundance of plushies made in far away places.

Thankfully over the years we have divested ourselves of all the stuffed dogs and cats and assorted animals. HHBL and I actually carted all the Beanie Babies to Rwanda and handed them out to all our “kids.

Carting a suitcase full of Beanie Babies and little back packs from Cleveland to Newark to Brussels to Kigali to Entebbe and back to Kigali was NOT a good time had by all. But it got them out of the house and into the hands of someone else who would enjoy them.

But I digress.

Today I am letting go of a treasured friend who has been hanging around eating stray bananas for many a year.

Mr. Monkey

I don’t remember how Mr. Monkey came to live with us. What wild jungle he was snatched from. It is quite possible that he was, dare I say it, a “bribe” for good behavior at one time. His “squeeker” is on it’s last legs. He has permanent orthopedic issues. And he is none too clean not to put too fine a point on it.

He is one of those stuffed animals that you can insert your hand into, all the way up to his head where you can make his “squeeker” squeek.

Putting my hand up his posterior regions always felt sort of proctological and just plain wrong.

And so, even though I cannot put him on a slow boat back to the wilds of Borneo I can send him to AmVets. That may just be wild enough for him.

Good Bye Mr. Monkey.

Day 40-Mr. Hammond, The Christmas Decorations are Down

Well, I have finally gotten the Christmas decorations stowed away in their assigned boxes. All the boxes are IN the basement but not back in the correct portion of the basement. That will happen tomorrow….

I hope.

But I have cleaned out the Christmas decorations, culling an entire box of things that we no longer put up, that are old and worn out, and that I never liked.

I was going to spend endless hours today photographing each one of the items and telling you about them.

And then I put on my big girl panties and decided that that idea was just too obsessively organized even for me…which is saying something.

Trust me it is a big box. I think I herniated a disc in my back lifting it up onto the counter so that I could get a good picture for the 3 of you who stop by here. And now I have to lift it off the counter and put it into the garage. Or better yet I will put it directly into Coco and take it to AmVets on Friday!

I have also made the decision to make life easier when decorating and to stick to one color of lights….clear.

I have eliminated most of my stings of colored lights over the years but there were three strands left, hiding in the bottom of the “lights bin”. I found them despite their efforts to hide. They are getting the heave ho as well.

Ahhhhhhh, it is nice to have my house back to it’s usual self.

Day 39–His Day Has Finally Come

Well, the new year has finally arrived. And that means that I am finally getting around to putting away the Christmas decorations. I will admit that this is one of the least favorite jobs that I do here at Chez Knit. And there are times when I think…

HEY! Maybe I can just leave the decorations up all year long and then just tell people that Chez Knit is actually a West Virginia colony.

No?

Darn.

But I digress.

When I put away the decorations I try to decide if there are any decorations that just don’t fit anymore. Those decorations that you pull out every year and then put right back in the box. You know the ones I mean. We all have them. I am sure that there are more of them that will show up here in the next few days.

But today…..

I am sorry to say that it is time for Easy Rider Santa to ride right out of here.

Yes, Ardith, I still have him….but not for long.

Easy Rider Santa “came” to me several years ago at The Annual March of the White Elephants. That is just another way to describe our yearly gathering to exchange unneeded, unwanted and sometimes heavily damaged goods. What a family!

Easy Rider Santa came to me fully functional and in it’s original box. SCORE!!! And I have put him out several years now. But he really doesn’t play well with others and must be put in a lonely spot where he cannot incite the other Santas to up and take a road trip.

Good bye Easy Rider Santa. It has been nice knowing you. Ardith do you want him back?? I would be GLAD to send him to you.

Day 38 The Re-purpose

Today I am not cleaning out but re-purposing. I try not to do that too often but you will understand when I tell you the story.

First a bit of back story. In 1998 HHBL and I were blessed to be able to take a trip to Israel with my Parental Units. It was fabulous! And I might have brought some things home with me. One of the things that I brought home and put to immediate use was a mug. A mug that I had purchased from the shop of a potter in Bethlehem. Ah Bethlehem, paradise of the locals who would gladly sell me a carved, olive wood camel for $5 or two for $10! Who would follow me on to the bus to try and get that final sale.

But I digress.

I brought the mug home. I loved it. I used it for tea and for coffee. And then one day I decided that I wanted to do a bit of “home remodeling” without having any knowledge of what I was doing. I got it into my brain that I wanted to get rid of the soffits that were above the cabinets in my kitchen. You know what a soffit is? It is the “filler” between the top of a cabinet and the ceiling. I don’t have any here at Chez Knit because I don’t like them. But at the old house I had plenty of them. And they bugged me. So one day I looked at the soffits above my cabinets and thought

I have never liked those.

I am sure they are just decorative.

How hard can it be to take them down.

I will go and get the hammer and the crow bar.

No one ever said that I knew anything about soffits. Or remodeling. The cabinets were fine without the soffits but those soffits were not entirely decorative. But that is neither here nor there. What I need to tell you is that when I started my mini demolition project I didn’t take the time to remove the dishes that were sitting on the counter. It didn’t even occur to me.

And so it was a very big surprise when part of the soffit came off in a less than controlled manner and crashed down onto dishes, breaking 5 cereal bowls AND…..

Chipping my favorite mug in not one but TWO places.

It was not a good day. But that was many a year ago and the mug has been in constant rotation for tea and coffee. The chips never seemed to be a problem. I was happy. Until recently when I took a look at the inside of the mug…..

Ever expanding cracks and hot liquid are not a good mix. The mug hasn’t yet begun to leak but it is only a matter of time until there is an unfortunate coffee incident early in the morning. But I am not ready to totally get rid of the mug. I love it. So I have given it a new life as something else. For the last two months I have had two very small rosemary starts that have been rooting in a little jar on my window sill. They were volunteers that I found in the rosemary plants that I brought inside at the end of summer.

Have I told you that I love rosemary.

And I love my Bethlehem mug.

And now everyone is happy.

Day 37- And The Pottery Just Keeps on Comin’

I think I have mentioned before that I have a pottery problem.

A dishes dilemma.

I ask myself daily the age old question….

How many dishes does any one person need in her life?

And the answer always is, Not as many as you think.

I cling to my pottery/dishes like I cling to my gray hair. Tenaciously. Like a bulldog with a nice meaty bone.

But even a bulldog has to drop that bone at some point.

This is what is being shipped out.

Sorry for the unfocused nature of the picture. That is because it is not focused. In case you missed it. This is a bowl that came as a Hostess gift several years ago at the
Annual Steal-a-thon Ornament Exchange. I have used it off and on but I have other things that work better and so…..bye bye.

This has been used in the past as a butter dish. We keep our butter out on the counter so that it is ready at a moments notice to be slathered on toast. But the problem with this little dish is that it has no top and is therefore open to the air…and vulnerable to rapacious dog lips. Remember this little incident…..

So I have decided that we will stick with the butter dishes that have a lid. It is safer that way.

Yes, yes I know this is Pampered Chef stuff and I know it is great. But I haven’t used it for any reason at all in about 3 years. And I think I can say that if I haven’t used it in three years then I am not going to use it so it goes….bye bye.

This beauty belonged to Grandma Amsler I believe. I have used it in the past but frankly I am tired of cutting a finger on the severely chipped handle every time I cook with it. It is a small size and that was a plus but I am tired of putting money into band aides.

And finally. Hope, these bowls belong with the set of white dishes that I gave you. Do you want them? If so then you can have them. I am not sure how they missed getting into the box of dishes but they did.

My dish cupboards feel lighter.

Did You Miss Me??? Otherwise Known as Day 36

Well! I certainly didn’t intend to take a good portion of the month of December off. I had cleaning out plans. Great and weighty plans.

And most of them came to absolutely nada.

I only have so many hours in the day. So many minutes in my life. And the month of December were filled with parties. And then more parties. And then Christmas. And family. And friends. And cookies, oh so many cookies. But no snow…..at least not until today.

Can I clean out the snow?

But I am back now and gearing up for more clean out.

As proof of this I offer you my small clean out for today.

You may not think this is a very big offering but believe me it is. It is the first step in breaking my addiction to pottery and dishes.

Good golly it is about time!

I am sure that there will be more pottery to come as I work in the dish cupboards.

That I even have multiple dish cupboards should tell you about the problem.

Sigh.

And to those who have let me know that you are starting the year out with clean outs, my joy is overflowing!!! Jen and Bonnie and all…..

You go girls!!!