Day 46- Tiling It On

One would think that I am neglecting this poor little blog.

And one might be right.

I must apologize to all 6 of you who wander by here occasionally. January is generally a bad month for me. I have trouble getting things done. I just don’t have the mojo after all that goes on around here in November and December.

But I think I am back on track. Today’s offering is small but significant.

Or not

Yes, that is a partially full box of tiles. Tiles from my back hallway to be specific.

They are being given the old heave ho. In the figurative sense that is because in the literally sense I would then have to clean up all the shattered tiles. I am all for making LESS work for myself rather than more.

And yes, I KNOW I should probably keep them. That the minute they leave the house for good I will drop something heavy on the back hall tiles and break one.

I am going to risk it. And there are other half empty boxes of tile from other tiled areas that are also going bye bye. Yes I could keep them for the next people who inhabit the house, whenever that is.

But I am not going to. They are on their own.

I am mean.

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.