Sometimes it take an emergency to push us to do some clutter removal. I have probably mentioned that we have been having water in our basement after the various big storms we have had since Hurricane Ida came through. The water appears as wet carpet (indoor/outdoor carpet so the carpet has not been ruined) in front a bookcase in our basement. The bookcase is in front of a window. Our hope is that the problem is caused by the fact that the basement windows sit below the grade of the land and there is a window well outside the window. It used to have a plastic bubble over it, but a few years ago the bubble burst (okay broke) and we have not been able to replace due to the fact that this is where poison ivy grows.
Husband decided that we need to move the bookcase and pick up the edge of carpet and see “what the story is”. The bookcase not only is filled with books – most related to his profession and many of them college textbooks (ie, big and heavy). On top of the bookcase are some shelves husband built to hold a stereo and small TV (video player for TV on the other bookcase next to this one) as he has an exercise bike there and would listen to music or watch TV while he rode it more regularly than he does now.
First job therefore was to find an alternate location for the stereo. He redid part of the top of a long, low bookcase in our bedroom (on his side) and managed to fit the stereo there – without having to get rid of the stuffed bears (his bears, not mine) on top. We then had to bring up the CDs for the stereo and the rack they are kept in. He found a spot under the bedroom TV for that – problem is that he cannot read the titles without sitting on the floor and can barely read them there and barely get up from the floor – but they have a new home.
Next came the BIG JOB. We had to get the books off the shelves and do “something with them”. I have mentioned before that I have trouble donating items as all of the locations I used to go to have all been closed over several years (actually over a decade since they started closing). The last one closed in late 2018 as I had items to bring there in October 2018, but had to come home as husband was unwell, and when I could back out in December 2018 to donate them – Goodwill had closed the location! Husband went looking online and Goodwill has opened a collection center where the store used to be – so we could bring the books there as they accept books.
First he sorted through the books – a good number of them he feels he can sell online (as if that idea has ever worked for us) and he moved them to a nearby table. The rest of the books had to be packed in some way to take and donate – and the packages of books had to be light enough for us to lift. I myself would gone with stacking them and tying the stacks, but he decided to use kitchen garbage bags – which could only be about half filled due to the weight of the books, being a problem both in ripping the bags and our being able to lift them. We packed the books over the past weekend. After they were all packed we started carrying the bags up from the basement. They were put in our dining room. After all were upstairs and we took a brief rest to recover, came the next part. I would carry a bag of books to the front door and he would be outside to carry the books to our van (parked on our driveway in front of the house). That gave us a van filled with books.
Yesterday, Tuesday, I added the 2 bags of stuff I had from before and we set out to donate it all. When we got to the Goodwill location there was actually parking near their location. When I have been there in the past the parking lot was always full (it is in a strip mall with stores and restaurants), but apparently between their store being closed and the pandemic it was far from full. There was even a shopping cart nearby that we could use. (Supermarket at other end of parking lot.) Problem was the drop off center was closed!!!
Apparently they have not updated their open times on their website. They are closed Tuesdays and Thursdays (and of course Sundays) now. So we turned around and drove the van home. We then ran the errand he planned to today (Wednesday) buying new eyeglasses as his vision had changed.
Today we went back and they now have all of the books and my miscellaneous stuff from 2018. (The 2018 stuff is some household items and also – we used to babysit his niece when she was young (now in her early 20s) one afternoon a week and had a laundry basket filled with toys for her. I had gone through the toys back in 2018, kept a couple of them that I liked, and bagged the rest to donate, along with plastic tissue box covers that had not been used in some years and other similar items.
So it took a flood to convince husband to donate stuff and get rid of it! He has not opened these books in decades – and certainly not since he quit his job, a little more than 10 years ago (before that the books were partially in his office at work). Now they are gone.
Today he took apart the shelves he made for the top of the bookcase and we will put it in his wood shop (our garage) for future use. Next thing to do is take apart the bookcase so we can put it out for trash pickup – will need a call for them to take it.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
What has been taking up room in your home for years/decades only because you have not bothered to deal with getting rid of it? Don't wait for a flood to deal with it.
Showing posts with label Goodwill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Goodwill. Show all posts
Thursday, November 4, 2021
SOMETIMES IT TAKES AN EMERGENCY...
Thursday, May 3, 2018
FINALLY STARTING TO CATCH UP
Husband gave up on his weaving project this past Monday - someday he will try to do this type of weaving again, but not now.
I have been working on catching up and getting the house and chores back up to date.
I have stored away the several pairs of boots each of us had out for snow this past winter. We have a sort of charm that we believe in (which did not work this winter) - once a pair of boots comes out for the snow, it is bad luck to put them away before the winter is over and will result in even more snow. Yeah, it is stupid and certainly did not work this winter, but we leave them out anyway. Since my teeth are in their seasonal ache period (spring and fall) and I have my seasonal stiff neck (ditto) I am pretty sure the weather will actually stay warm now. So I put the boots away. Our setup for the boots is 2 good sized plastic boxes with lids at the bottom of the front closet. The bottom box holds the boots for more severe weather - the actual snow boots, a pair each of rubber (plastic?) covered shoe boots and such. The upper box holds the boots that might also be worn in rainy weather - the leather ones - and a pair of my old sneakers which slip on. The latter has nothing to do with boots or bad weather. If I have to run out of the house - take out the garbage, recycling, forgot something in the car - they are easy and quick to slip on instead of stopping to put on shoes with laces to go out. They sit at the front and top of the top box so they can be quickly and easily reached. The lid of the upper box becomes a boot tray when we have the boots out - it is placed next to the front door and wet boots are left on it to dry and await their next wearing. I washed and dried the top of it well before putting it back on the box in the closet.
While I managed to fit in the bank reconciliations for our main bank accounts and those of the clubs of which I am treasurer, I did not get to the other accounts - personal savings accounts and a couple of small checking accounts that are used for money transfers, as well as since it was the quarterly statements, the statements for our IRAs. At this point the new statements will be here next week - so I will do the two months of statements together as that is quicker than doing one set now and one set next week. I did find time today to go back and post the purchases and credits on our main credit card statement from last month. I had matched the slips to the statement and paid the bill - in full of course - but had not had a chance to post it to my computer records - so today I did so. Providence must have been helping me as the items for this statement rarely comes out even (posts done with what was billed and paid) on the first try - sometimes it takes lots of tries - but this was one of the time that it worked out on the first try.
Right now I am doing my Wednesday night laundry. Forgot that I had done a load of jeans last week and it was left in the dryer to dry - so I had to bring them upstairs to be able to use the dryer. I also have 2 extra loads I need to do this week. I change the bed’s “underwear” once a month. While I bought new pillow undercovers during the month (as the ones I had were really icky when I saw them - stained and such) I need to wash the mattress pad I took off. We sleep in winter with two blankets. Since it is now in the 70s during the days husband suggested that we only need one blanket now for the warmer weather. I only made the bed with the green blanket and the blue one is waiting to be washed and put on the bed next week. Why do we have two different color blankets? When we needed a new blanket after we had the bed bugs we bought the blue one. Later when it got colder we decided we needed a second one and the store only had the green ones in the correct size. Since I like blue, I wash the blue one first when we are switching to one blanket and leave the green one on the bed to use while the blue one is washed. Then I will put the clean blue blanket on the bed and wash the green blanket. The green blanket will be put in a clear plastic bag when it is clean and after squeezing as much air as I can, the bag will be sealed. The green blanket will then be store in the bedroom in a piece of furniture (a plastic end table with a shelf under it and a closed cabinet area below that - it used to be in our living room in our apartment). In the fall I will put the green blanket on the bed and again wash and dry the blue one.
Today was my embroidery chapter meeting. Due to illnesses somehow not only was I the treasurer, but the secretary asked me during the week to take minutes for her and then this morning the membership chair called and said she was ill and asked me to take care of the renewals (our national group sets the membership year as June through the following May, so everyone has to renew right now), getting a sign in list of members, etc. for her. Plus the VP is out of state and she asked me to get the list of who will bring what to her house for our annual party next month.
After the meeting - which was the first one I went to since January (February and March meetings were canceled for weather and husband’s birthday meant that I could not go to the April meeting). I ran errands which have been waiting since late January to be done.
I had packed some items to donate. Many of them were old computer disk storage items, some were household serving pieces and others were clothes. The bags have been sitting in front of the office closet door since they were packed in late January - each time I thought it would only be a month before they were taken to Goodwill. So if I needed our business checkbook, new paper for the printer, my other laptop bag (I have one for travel and one for work - they hold different things) or the box of 2017 paid bills that I temporarily stuck in the top of the office closet until I clear out the 2008 box from the top of the closet and pack the 2017 papers (bills, statements and anything else) in it and put it in the top of the closet I had to move all the bags, open the closet door, take out what I need (or put away what I no longer needed) and then put all the bags back. So nice to be able to just open the closet.
Similarly I had not been able to bring back our recyclable plastic (soda) bottles for refund of their deposit since early January. I managed to get rid of one small bag (10 bottles, 50 cents) when I suggested to husband that we get rid of a small bag of bottles easily and quickly in the interim, but I kept forgetting to bring another small bag and get rid of them. There still is about half a month’s bottles in the porch - if all goes as it should, they will be returned next month along with any bottles between now and then.
I even managed to fit in a quick trip to the bank branch where we have a safe deposit box and switch an updated offsite data stick drive for the one in the box - also not done since January and intended as a monthly thing to do. I also ordered new checks as I am down to one book while I was there.
So catching up is progressing. I even fit in one of our VERY long telephone conversations with mom.
I mentioned late last year that we had accumulated and submitted a variety of paperwork to our local township for us to receive a senior real estate tax exemption, which is income based. I am happy to say that I received the paperwork saying that we have been given the exemption. This will cut our property taxes for the school year 2018-2019 and our other real estate taxes for 2019. We have to reapply later this year for the following year - at least now we know what to do and what we will need. I have already started collecting the papers as some of them come in without us having to request them. I start contacting the places I will need additional paperwork from either late this month or the beginning of next month - it is all due by the end of the year, so there is time to get it done easily and they will not send out the forms until late August.
For a bit of extra fun, we need to put a new carbon monoxide monitor alarm and a new propane monitor alarm in our RV. We have actually replaced the carbon monoxide monitor before and did not anticipate any problems with it. We have not needed to replace the propane monitor before, but the instructions seemed pretty straight forward. We had to order both monitors. The propane monitor had to be ordered from Canada. Husband found the carbon monoxide monitor listed for sale online, but the one he found said “marine” across it and is intended for a boat. He emailed the company selling it and was assured that it was it the same one - same model number and all.
The carbon monoxide monitor arrived first at our PO Box. When opened it did say “marine” across it. It also has not only different specifications than the one we have, but also they are different than those in the listing it was purchased from. Husband emailed the company about this on Friday. On Tuesday he telephoned as he had not heard back. The employee had him leave a message for the person he needed to talk to and he was assured he would be called back later in the day - today (Wednesday) he called again, spoke to the same employee and was told the same thing and he was a bit less pleasant and she told him that he had written to the wrong email address (the one in their listings) and gave him her email to send the info to - hopefully this will get resolved.
Husband went to take out the old propane monitor - should be easy - push two pieces of plastic on the front together and pull. Apparently the wire was too short for it to pull out. While we need the wire to attach the new one, we had to squeeze in a small wire cutter and cut the wires to get the old one off. We have attempted to remove the piece of floor in this section to get to where the wire connects - but it won’t lift out even after the screws were removed.
Hopefully both of these will soon work out and be installed or we cannot travel in the RV. Next we will progress to dewinterizing the RV - a messy job over 2 days to drain the antifreeze in the pipes and tanks out, add a vinegar and water mixture, run it through the pipes and shake it around the tanks by driving forward and backwards (I mean backwards or forwards or there will be a hole in the garage door) and stopping quickly. Then the vinegar and water mixture is drained out and plain water put in the tanks - then run out through the pipes and taps (3 pairs of taps and toilet) and then the plain water put in again and run out.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK - If the work that needs to be done seems immense, do it little by little.
Figure out what is most important to be done and do that work.
Take what can be set aside “for now” and do so - but put all of the items set aside as same together.
Then do the next the thing which needs to be done and so on.
It is amazing what will get done this way and you will get closer to catching up, if not caught up completely.
I have been working on catching up and getting the house and chores back up to date.
I have stored away the several pairs of boots each of us had out for snow this past winter. We have a sort of charm that we believe in (which did not work this winter) - once a pair of boots comes out for the snow, it is bad luck to put them away before the winter is over and will result in even more snow. Yeah, it is stupid and certainly did not work this winter, but we leave them out anyway. Since my teeth are in their seasonal ache period (spring and fall) and I have my seasonal stiff neck (ditto) I am pretty sure the weather will actually stay warm now. So I put the boots away. Our setup for the boots is 2 good sized plastic boxes with lids at the bottom of the front closet. The bottom box holds the boots for more severe weather - the actual snow boots, a pair each of rubber (plastic?) covered shoe boots and such. The upper box holds the boots that might also be worn in rainy weather - the leather ones - and a pair of my old sneakers which slip on. The latter has nothing to do with boots or bad weather. If I have to run out of the house - take out the garbage, recycling, forgot something in the car - they are easy and quick to slip on instead of stopping to put on shoes with laces to go out. They sit at the front and top of the top box so they can be quickly and easily reached. The lid of the upper box becomes a boot tray when we have the boots out - it is placed next to the front door and wet boots are left on it to dry and await their next wearing. I washed and dried the top of it well before putting it back on the box in the closet.
While I managed to fit in the bank reconciliations for our main bank accounts and those of the clubs of which I am treasurer, I did not get to the other accounts - personal savings accounts and a couple of small checking accounts that are used for money transfers, as well as since it was the quarterly statements, the statements for our IRAs. At this point the new statements will be here next week - so I will do the two months of statements together as that is quicker than doing one set now and one set next week. I did find time today to go back and post the purchases and credits on our main credit card statement from last month. I had matched the slips to the statement and paid the bill - in full of course - but had not had a chance to post it to my computer records - so today I did so. Providence must have been helping me as the items for this statement rarely comes out even (posts done with what was billed and paid) on the first try - sometimes it takes lots of tries - but this was one of the time that it worked out on the first try.
Right now I am doing my Wednesday night laundry. Forgot that I had done a load of jeans last week and it was left in the dryer to dry - so I had to bring them upstairs to be able to use the dryer. I also have 2 extra loads I need to do this week. I change the bed’s “underwear” once a month. While I bought new pillow undercovers during the month (as the ones I had were really icky when I saw them - stained and such) I need to wash the mattress pad I took off. We sleep in winter with two blankets. Since it is now in the 70s during the days husband suggested that we only need one blanket now for the warmer weather. I only made the bed with the green blanket and the blue one is waiting to be washed and put on the bed next week. Why do we have two different color blankets? When we needed a new blanket after we had the bed bugs we bought the blue one. Later when it got colder we decided we needed a second one and the store only had the green ones in the correct size. Since I like blue, I wash the blue one first when we are switching to one blanket and leave the green one on the bed to use while the blue one is washed. Then I will put the clean blue blanket on the bed and wash the green blanket. The green blanket will be put in a clear plastic bag when it is clean and after squeezing as much air as I can, the bag will be sealed. The green blanket will then be store in the bedroom in a piece of furniture (a plastic end table with a shelf under it and a closed cabinet area below that - it used to be in our living room in our apartment). In the fall I will put the green blanket on the bed and again wash and dry the blue one.
Today was my embroidery chapter meeting. Due to illnesses somehow not only was I the treasurer, but the secretary asked me during the week to take minutes for her and then this morning the membership chair called and said she was ill and asked me to take care of the renewals (our national group sets the membership year as June through the following May, so everyone has to renew right now), getting a sign in list of members, etc. for her. Plus the VP is out of state and she asked me to get the list of who will bring what to her house for our annual party next month.
After the meeting - which was the first one I went to since January (February and March meetings were canceled for weather and husband’s birthday meant that I could not go to the April meeting). I ran errands which have been waiting since late January to be done.
I had packed some items to donate. Many of them were old computer disk storage items, some were household serving pieces and others were clothes. The bags have been sitting in front of the office closet door since they were packed in late January - each time I thought it would only be a month before they were taken to Goodwill. So if I needed our business checkbook, new paper for the printer, my other laptop bag (I have one for travel and one for work - they hold different things) or the box of 2017 paid bills that I temporarily stuck in the top of the office closet until I clear out the 2008 box from the top of the closet and pack the 2017 papers (bills, statements and anything else) in it and put it in the top of the closet I had to move all the bags, open the closet door, take out what I need (or put away what I no longer needed) and then put all the bags back. So nice to be able to just open the closet.
Similarly I had not been able to bring back our recyclable plastic (soda) bottles for refund of their deposit since early January. I managed to get rid of one small bag (10 bottles, 50 cents) when I suggested to husband that we get rid of a small bag of bottles easily and quickly in the interim, but I kept forgetting to bring another small bag and get rid of them. There still is about half a month’s bottles in the porch - if all goes as it should, they will be returned next month along with any bottles between now and then.
I even managed to fit in a quick trip to the bank branch where we have a safe deposit box and switch an updated offsite data stick drive for the one in the box - also not done since January and intended as a monthly thing to do. I also ordered new checks as I am down to one book while I was there.
So catching up is progressing. I even fit in one of our VERY long telephone conversations with mom.
I mentioned late last year that we had accumulated and submitted a variety of paperwork to our local township for us to receive a senior real estate tax exemption, which is income based. I am happy to say that I received the paperwork saying that we have been given the exemption. This will cut our property taxes for the school year 2018-2019 and our other real estate taxes for 2019. We have to reapply later this year for the following year - at least now we know what to do and what we will need. I have already started collecting the papers as some of them come in without us having to request them. I start contacting the places I will need additional paperwork from either late this month or the beginning of next month - it is all due by the end of the year, so there is time to get it done easily and they will not send out the forms until late August.
For a bit of extra fun, we need to put a new carbon monoxide monitor alarm and a new propane monitor alarm in our RV. We have actually replaced the carbon monoxide monitor before and did not anticipate any problems with it. We have not needed to replace the propane monitor before, but the instructions seemed pretty straight forward. We had to order both monitors. The propane monitor had to be ordered from Canada. Husband found the carbon monoxide monitor listed for sale online, but the one he found said “marine” across it and is intended for a boat. He emailed the company selling it and was assured that it was it the same one - same model number and all.
The carbon monoxide monitor arrived first at our PO Box. When opened it did say “marine” across it. It also has not only different specifications than the one we have, but also they are different than those in the listing it was purchased from. Husband emailed the company about this on Friday. On Tuesday he telephoned as he had not heard back. The employee had him leave a message for the person he needed to talk to and he was assured he would be called back later in the day - today (Wednesday) he called again, spoke to the same employee and was told the same thing and he was a bit less pleasant and she told him that he had written to the wrong email address (the one in their listings) and gave him her email to send the info to - hopefully this will get resolved.
Husband went to take out the old propane monitor - should be easy - push two pieces of plastic on the front together and pull. Apparently the wire was too short for it to pull out. While we need the wire to attach the new one, we had to squeeze in a small wire cutter and cut the wires to get the old one off. We have attempted to remove the piece of floor in this section to get to where the wire connects - but it won’t lift out even after the screws were removed.
Hopefully both of these will soon work out and be installed or we cannot travel in the RV. Next we will progress to dewinterizing the RV - a messy job over 2 days to drain the antifreeze in the pipes and tanks out, add a vinegar and water mixture, run it through the pipes and shake it around the tanks by driving forward and backwards (I mean backwards or forwards or there will be a hole in the garage door) and stopping quickly. Then the vinegar and water mixture is drained out and plain water put in the tanks - then run out through the pipes and taps (3 pairs of taps and toilet) and then the plain water put in again and run out.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK - If the work that needs to be done seems immense, do it little by little.
Figure out what is most important to be done and do that work.
Take what can be set aside “for now” and do so - but put all of the items set aside as same together.
Then do the next the thing which needs to be done and so on.
It is amazing what will get done this way and you will get closer to catching up, if not caught up completely.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
DOES TIME EXPAND TO FIT THE WORK TO BE DONE - OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND?
Well my client was not there when I telephoned her last week. I will be going to her on Thursday. Due to not going to her and a few other bills that popped up I started to go into a panic about paying our bills on time. We pay every bill, every month in full - no payouts, with two much discussed before we did them, exceptions, in the almost 40 years we have been married and we each did so before. This was a timing error - bills were due out and the money was coming in too late to pay them. So we had to raid my tiny IRA for $1000 to carry us through. We will need to make a regular scheduled withdrawal from husband’s IRA next month to pay our quarterly real estate taxes and our semi-annual car insurance payment in February.
I packed up the rest of the ornaments from the main and studio trees over the weekend. Monday night I took the lights off the tree - except the top section which the lights stay in place on. My right elbow started hurting last week (maybe even the week before at this point) especially when lifting my arm or lifting something heavy with my arm and it has been hard to do all of this. Our main tree is artificial (well, all of them are) and had to be disassembled and the sections are too heavy for me to lift with this arm, so last night husband took it apart and stacked the pieces in the dining room where I told him to put them. This way he can warp his loom and start working on it again and the pieces of tree can “drift” downstairs as I can deal with them - he would get ill bending over to put them into the tree box. The studio tree is not in the way and will also find its way downstairs and after the these trees are down I will be able to take apart the one in the dining room- currently blocked by the pieces from the main tree. Since we don’t really get Christmas gifts there is nothing of same to put away - just one empty box that I will ask husband about tossing. I did move the “Christmas boxes” we use for storage out of the way - these are Christmas decorated gift or storage boxes that I store Christmas decorations in during the year and then put them - empty - under the tree so it looks pretty and like there are gifts under the tree. So today we warped his loom - without the tree there is enough room to do so. But he is still surrounded by Santas, angels, Christmas and Chanukah bears.
I finally had a chance to write a cover letter and get out the renewal reminders for our reenactment unit - I serve as the membership chair in addition to being the treasurer as it is easier than passing the info back and forth to someone else about renewals. I had been delayed due to an error on our national group’s website. Something interesting - when I went on their website with my computer and clicked on this year’s membership form I got instead a form for people to form and sign up a new unit. When I contacted the person in charge she said that when she clicked on it she got the membership form. Hmmm? Turns out if one went on the site with a computer one got the unit form, but if one went on the site with a tablet or phone one got the correct the form. It has been corrected thank to my asking about it - it also delayed sending out the renewals a week waiting for this. We put together the mailing t - folded cover letter and forms, put in envelopes, put on stamps and address and return address labels. Out in the mail today. The renewal reminders and forms went out in today’s mail.
I have out a stack of books to write a talk that I am scheduled to give at my embroidery chapter on our meeting next month - 2 weeks from today - on the history of samplers. I keep trying to get started writing it. I know the basics of what I plan to say and the order, but I have to get it all together and have an outline to follow - I would hate to suddenly forget a word in the middle of the talk and I don’t want to start to wander off point! Husband will print out photos for me that he has taken at exhibitions we have gone to - plus I may pull some off the Internet or out of the books I have. Somehow I know it will be done as I want to do it. I don’t feel that I can teach stitches or techniques at meetings as others have done, but I am real good at talking. (Can you tell that from my posts?) I sent out an email today to the chapter board asking if anyone had anything for me to include in the newsletter - which will go out next Wednesday (meeting is the week after).
I put my older software DVDs/CDs that I still need to keep in 2 new boxes as the old ones did not hold much and kept falling apart. The old ones will be donated next month - along with a bag of unworn pantyhose - I wore one and it was awful, so I tossed that one and the rest of the huge bag (from an outlet) will be donated. I have a glass bowl that did not make it in December when I went to Goodwill that will join them. Looking around for what else can be donated.
And now tomorrow I will spend driving to Queens, taking the subway to Manhattan, working for about 3 hours, and then take the subway back to Queens and drive home. I will spend between 4 and 5 hours in transit for the 3 hour visit. Hopefully our mechanic found the problem last month and the drive home will be comfortable. I have already put burgers in the refrigerator to defrost for dinner tomorrow night when I get home.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
We can get more done when we have to than we do when we don’t have to.
It seems odd to me that I normally have trouble getting through what I need to in a week, but then those weeks come when I have to do a LOT more - Christmas decorating or decoration storage, writing a talk to give at a meeting, catching up on laundry when I fall behind, tax season, and other assorted extra or emergency jobs. Somehow it all always seems to get done.
I packed up the rest of the ornaments from the main and studio trees over the weekend. Monday night I took the lights off the tree - except the top section which the lights stay in place on. My right elbow started hurting last week (maybe even the week before at this point) especially when lifting my arm or lifting something heavy with my arm and it has been hard to do all of this. Our main tree is artificial (well, all of them are) and had to be disassembled and the sections are too heavy for me to lift with this arm, so last night husband took it apart and stacked the pieces in the dining room where I told him to put them. This way he can warp his loom and start working on it again and the pieces of tree can “drift” downstairs as I can deal with them - he would get ill bending over to put them into the tree box. The studio tree is not in the way and will also find its way downstairs and after the these trees are down I will be able to take apart the one in the dining room- currently blocked by the pieces from the main tree. Since we don’t really get Christmas gifts there is nothing of same to put away - just one empty box that I will ask husband about tossing. I did move the “Christmas boxes” we use for storage out of the way - these are Christmas decorated gift or storage boxes that I store Christmas decorations in during the year and then put them - empty - under the tree so it looks pretty and like there are gifts under the tree. So today we warped his loom - without the tree there is enough room to do so. But he is still surrounded by Santas, angels, Christmas and Chanukah bears.
I finally had a chance to write a cover letter and get out the renewal reminders for our reenactment unit - I serve as the membership chair in addition to being the treasurer as it is easier than passing the info back and forth to someone else about renewals. I had been delayed due to an error on our national group’s website. Something interesting - when I went on their website with my computer and clicked on this year’s membership form I got instead a form for people to form and sign up a new unit. When I contacted the person in charge she said that when she clicked on it she got the membership form. Hmmm? Turns out if one went on the site with a computer one got the unit form, but if one went on the site with a tablet or phone one got the correct the form. It has been corrected thank to my asking about it - it also delayed sending out the renewals a week waiting for this. We put together the mailing t - folded cover letter and forms, put in envelopes, put on stamps and address and return address labels. Out in the mail today. The renewal reminders and forms went out in today’s mail.
I have out a stack of books to write a talk that I am scheduled to give at my embroidery chapter on our meeting next month - 2 weeks from today - on the history of samplers. I keep trying to get started writing it. I know the basics of what I plan to say and the order, but I have to get it all together and have an outline to follow - I would hate to suddenly forget a word in the middle of the talk and I don’t want to start to wander off point! Husband will print out photos for me that he has taken at exhibitions we have gone to - plus I may pull some off the Internet or out of the books I have. Somehow I know it will be done as I want to do it. I don’t feel that I can teach stitches or techniques at meetings as others have done, but I am real good at talking. (Can you tell that from my posts?) I sent out an email today to the chapter board asking if anyone had anything for me to include in the newsletter - which will go out next Wednesday (meeting is the week after).
I put my older software DVDs/CDs that I still need to keep in 2 new boxes as the old ones did not hold much and kept falling apart. The old ones will be donated next month - along with a bag of unworn pantyhose - I wore one and it was awful, so I tossed that one and the rest of the huge bag (from an outlet) will be donated. I have a glass bowl that did not make it in December when I went to Goodwill that will join them. Looking around for what else can be donated.
And now tomorrow I will spend driving to Queens, taking the subway to Manhattan, working for about 3 hours, and then take the subway back to Queens and drive home. I will spend between 4 and 5 hours in transit for the 3 hour visit. Hopefully our mechanic found the problem last month and the drive home will be comfortable. I have already put burgers in the refrigerator to defrost for dinner tomorrow night when I get home.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
We can get more done when we have to than we do when we don’t have to.
It seems odd to me that I normally have trouble getting through what I need to in a week, but then those weeks come when I have to do a LOT more - Christmas decorating or decoration storage, writing a talk to give at a meeting, catching up on laundry when I fall behind, tax season, and other assorted extra or emergency jobs. Somehow it all always seems to get done.
Thursday, December 7, 2017
Missing items and items forgotten about appear when decorating and decluttering
Last week I talked about putting out our outdoor Christmas decorations. I also had the boldness to say that because I know where the Christmas items are stored it is easy to find them. I apparently lied without knowing it.
We had not put our battery candles in the front windows when we put up the lights outside. While technically inside the house as they are placed inside the windows, their purpose is to be seen from outside, so I consider them to be outside decorations. When we remembered that we had forgotten to put them in place I immediately went to my candle drawer (holds all manner of candles) where I know I keep them. They were not there - I took everything out of the drawer to check. I looked in the drawer next to the candle drawer to see if I stuck them there - perhaps the candle drawer was too full? These drawers are under our living room TV which is (old and analog and) in a cabinet we bought for it and the drawers are in the cabinet. I then looked in all the “logical” places - the drawers in the end tables next to the sofa, the secretary - shelves and drawers - no candles.
Where could they be - maybe in with the inside the house decorations in 2 boxes in the basement? I got the two boxes and opened and went through them - no candles. I figured that sooner or later they would show up in my Christmas decorating and I was not going to go crazy over them.
I decided that since the boxes had been brought up and were sitting there and I had a hour or two until we went out for dinner, I would start putting out the decorations. The decorations are artificial greens and swags and other small items to put out. I started on the dining room decorations as husband still has his loom set up in the living room. I put items here and there in the dining room and front hall (the items in the same box). I came across two candle rings (small fake flowers in a ring intended to sit around the base of stubby candles) and I had an “aha” moment and knew where the window candles were.
In addition to the plastic boxes in the basement I have 3 decorative boxes with Christmas items upstairs in a trunk at the top of the stairs, with some other Christmas decorations - two large angels and such. The candles for the rings are in one of the decorative boxes - and I knew that the window candles must be in one also. I went upstairs, moved the 3 families of bears who “live” on the trunk and opened it - there were the boxes and yes, the window candles were in there. I took them out and put the boxes and bears back for now. I put the candles on my desk as they have timers and have to be lit at the time I want them to go on. A couple of days later I remembered at the right time and set them up with batteries and put them in the window - at last the outside lights are finished for this year!
I have been somewhat busy since then as I had my embroidery chapter meeting today and had to get paperwork together for it. Also, I was not doing the project the group was doing at the meeting as I thought I would be away, so I had to pick something to bring to work on at the meeting.
I also did a bit of decluttering. We have 2 corner cabinets in our living room - they each have display shelves in the main part of them and then 2 shelves in a closed door cabinet at the bottom for storage. One of them has items I somewhat often use for Thanksgiving, Christmas etc. The other has items we either have never used or have not used in decades. In addition to wanting to get rid of them in general, I figure with the tax law changes under discussion, this might be my last chance to donate them and get a tax advantage from same. My husband is big on keeping things - “we might need it one day” or “maybe we could sell this, keep it”. I would never get rid of anything of his, but I have to argue to get rid things that are mine also. So while he was busy upstairs, I went through what was in the bottom of the cabinet. I pulled out to donate glass serving bowls, glass platters, glass cake server which also can be a punch server, several candy dishes (in unopened boxes). I brought them all to the kitchen, listed them on a piece of paper, and stored them in large shopping bags in our studio on my side of the room - he would just figure it was bags of my stuff (or his) if he saw them. I also had some things to go on computers (not electronic stuff - paper holder that attaches to a monitor and the like) which had been waiting to go to storage or donation for at least 15 years. Also a decorative jar that the lid just sits on -does not screw on for storage. 6 small wine glasses with a silver dipped edge - his mom’s, we got them after she died and we had previously discussed that they could be gotten rid of. Lastly - when we replaced our mailbox earlier this year, we put the old one aside in the garage “in case the new one did not work out”. This past weekend he had tripped on it in the garage while putting up the Christmas lights and swore at it - it was definitely time for it to go.
Normally I would have put all this (5 bags worth plus the mailbox) in the car Tuesday nights - along with the soda bottles to be returned for deposit - but it was raining. The soda bottles went out earlier in the evening, but not the donations. So this morning I loaded them into the car. After my meeting and various errands I drove to Goodwill and donated the stuff and then went to Walmart and returned the soda bottles. Well, a small bit more room in the house. I am trying to figure out what should now go in the bottom of that cabinet - there are some items I kept - mostly a hand crafted coffee set someone gave us as a wedding gift - I kept it as it is from someone he knew and won’t get rid of it without permission. There are also display items in the cabinet for the items (a set of bear figurines which I rotate by month and need to raise some up so all can be seen) in the cabinet, which I left - I did find a box of the figurines I bought in the last couple of years as they have made a reappearance at flea markets and back stored stock of a store; I knew that there were more of them than I had found! I have to organize all the new ones so they join the right month’s group of the ones I have. (You know - lovers in February, flowers in May, graduates in June and so on.)
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Sometimes even when one thinks all is organized one is not - and items may happily appear as one unpacks items to be put out or when one goes through items to get rid of.
I hope that none of you are in the area of the terrible fires in southern California.
We had not put our battery candles in the front windows when we put up the lights outside. While technically inside the house as they are placed inside the windows, their purpose is to be seen from outside, so I consider them to be outside decorations. When we remembered that we had forgotten to put them in place I immediately went to my candle drawer (holds all manner of candles) where I know I keep them. They were not there - I took everything out of the drawer to check. I looked in the drawer next to the candle drawer to see if I stuck them there - perhaps the candle drawer was too full? These drawers are under our living room TV which is (old and analog and) in a cabinet we bought for it and the drawers are in the cabinet. I then looked in all the “logical” places - the drawers in the end tables next to the sofa, the secretary - shelves and drawers - no candles.
Where could they be - maybe in with the inside the house decorations in 2 boxes in the basement? I got the two boxes and opened and went through them - no candles. I figured that sooner or later they would show up in my Christmas decorating and I was not going to go crazy over them.
I decided that since the boxes had been brought up and were sitting there and I had a hour or two until we went out for dinner, I would start putting out the decorations. The decorations are artificial greens and swags and other small items to put out. I started on the dining room decorations as husband still has his loom set up in the living room. I put items here and there in the dining room and front hall (the items in the same box). I came across two candle rings (small fake flowers in a ring intended to sit around the base of stubby candles) and I had an “aha” moment and knew where the window candles were.
In addition to the plastic boxes in the basement I have 3 decorative boxes with Christmas items upstairs in a trunk at the top of the stairs, with some other Christmas decorations - two large angels and such. The candles for the rings are in one of the decorative boxes - and I knew that the window candles must be in one also. I went upstairs, moved the 3 families of bears who “live” on the trunk and opened it - there were the boxes and yes, the window candles were in there. I took them out and put the boxes and bears back for now. I put the candles on my desk as they have timers and have to be lit at the time I want them to go on. A couple of days later I remembered at the right time and set them up with batteries and put them in the window - at last the outside lights are finished for this year!
I have been somewhat busy since then as I had my embroidery chapter meeting today and had to get paperwork together for it. Also, I was not doing the project the group was doing at the meeting as I thought I would be away, so I had to pick something to bring to work on at the meeting.
I also did a bit of decluttering. We have 2 corner cabinets in our living room - they each have display shelves in the main part of them and then 2 shelves in a closed door cabinet at the bottom for storage. One of them has items I somewhat often use for Thanksgiving, Christmas etc. The other has items we either have never used or have not used in decades. In addition to wanting to get rid of them in general, I figure with the tax law changes under discussion, this might be my last chance to donate them and get a tax advantage from same. My husband is big on keeping things - “we might need it one day” or “maybe we could sell this, keep it”. I would never get rid of anything of his, but I have to argue to get rid things that are mine also. So while he was busy upstairs, I went through what was in the bottom of the cabinet. I pulled out to donate glass serving bowls, glass platters, glass cake server which also can be a punch server, several candy dishes (in unopened boxes). I brought them all to the kitchen, listed them on a piece of paper, and stored them in large shopping bags in our studio on my side of the room - he would just figure it was bags of my stuff (or his) if he saw them. I also had some things to go on computers (not electronic stuff - paper holder that attaches to a monitor and the like) which had been waiting to go to storage or donation for at least 15 years. Also a decorative jar that the lid just sits on -does not screw on for storage. 6 small wine glasses with a silver dipped edge - his mom’s, we got them after she died and we had previously discussed that they could be gotten rid of. Lastly - when we replaced our mailbox earlier this year, we put the old one aside in the garage “in case the new one did not work out”. This past weekend he had tripped on it in the garage while putting up the Christmas lights and swore at it - it was definitely time for it to go.
Normally I would have put all this (5 bags worth plus the mailbox) in the car Tuesday nights - along with the soda bottles to be returned for deposit - but it was raining. The soda bottles went out earlier in the evening, but not the donations. So this morning I loaded them into the car. After my meeting and various errands I drove to Goodwill and donated the stuff and then went to Walmart and returned the soda bottles. Well, a small bit more room in the house. I am trying to figure out what should now go in the bottom of that cabinet - there are some items I kept - mostly a hand crafted coffee set someone gave us as a wedding gift - I kept it as it is from someone he knew and won’t get rid of it without permission. There are also display items in the cabinet for the items (a set of bear figurines which I rotate by month and need to raise some up so all can be seen) in the cabinet, which I left - I did find a box of the figurines I bought in the last couple of years as they have made a reappearance at flea markets and back stored stock of a store; I knew that there were more of them than I had found! I have to organize all the new ones so they join the right month’s group of the ones I have. (You know - lovers in February, flowers in May, graduates in June and so on.)
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Sometimes even when one thinks all is organized one is not - and items may happily appear as one unpacks items to be put out or when one goes through items to get rid of.
I hope that none of you are in the area of the terrible fires in southern California.
Thursday, October 5, 2017
STARTING MY THIRD YEAR
Well this is the first post of the third year of my blog. (Imagine balloons rising, confetti falling, and triumphant music.) Understand this is probably my 4th or 5th attempt at a blog. None of the earlier ones had a second post. For a procrastinator, this is pretty good. Other than the recent post which was scheduled to post and did not (I am sure it was my fault in how I set up the scheduling) and the post that followed it and was posted a day later, I have managed to post them on time - even better for a procrastinator. I want to thank you all for reading my blog, especially those who follow me. Knowing you are out there reading the blog helps me keep writing it. (Imagine applause for you.)
So, how has being a blogger been for me? Well, I appreciate those of you who follow me, but I had expected a larger number of followers. I am not sure if the low numbers are related to lack of interest in my blog or people not finding my blog. For my personal happiness, I presume it is the latter. (Tell your friends - have them tell their friends.) But I am aware it might be the former. My original idea of telling how and where I store things (and why) seemed terribly dry to me when I read the early posts back after posting them, so I switched to more of a week by week story of what I did right, what I did wrong, and my attempts to keep everything up to date and taken care of. It reads better to me and I hope to you. I am also interested in what YOU think - please feel free to reply to the blog itself as well as any posts - do you wonder how I deal with something or other?
September is over and with it I hope I will have a chance to breathe.
I managed to get the needed information to my client from last week. Her fax has never worked and therefore I faxed the needed form to a friend of hers. His fax did not work right in accepting faxes. I tried faxing a number of times - with my husband standing there making noises about how much each attempt was costing us - our home telephone is rarely used for making calls as I have unlimited cell phone minutes, so each call was a “toll call” to NYC, plus the page that was printed each time to tell me the fax did not go through. Since doing something over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of stupidity, I called the client and told her that I would mail her the form. Friday she would not be at work as that evening would be a Jewish holiday and she is closed on the weekend. I telephoned her on Monday and she had received the form and faxed it with needed attachment to the number I had given her - hopefully it was in time for them to process before her monthly fee for minimum use was due to be debited from the account.
I also finished a tax return for another client - it was on extension so it is not late. That was promptly mailed out. I do have one client whose return I have not done - she and her husband owe me information from 3 years ago to do their returns and I keep pushing her as she will lose a sizeable refund if she does not file her 2014 return by April 15 of 2018. (If you have unfiled income tax returns - don’t let that happen to you - if you have not filed a return within 3 years of its due date you will lose any refund due you. Out to the client 2 weeks before it is due.
Last Sunday we had a reenctment event. It was the first time the unit was doing this event - it was at our headquarters, but the building itself was the focus of the event rather than the unit outside with muskets and crafts. The unit commander could not come after he set it up, so husband, who is assistant commander had to deal with everything - which of course means much work for me. I woke a half hour before the alarm was set to go off on Sunday morning - with a terribly ill stomach. Husband started to panic- what would we do? He had to go as he was in charge and he needed me. I told him that he would go to the event in our car - members get to most events 2 hours before it is to start to have everything set up - and I would come later in our van, unless my stomach did not recover. He was not happy at driving there alone, being there alone and, more important, me not being well. I went over where the turns are to get there as he is always asking me when driving there - “Is this where I turn?” at the wrong place. (“Remember, you will pass the diner your sister goes to on the right, then you turn left at the light after the Stop and Shop supermarket is on the left. Then you turn left again after the long stretch of nurseries....”) I managed to get there on time for the actual event. We had a quiet day (depending on who you ask we had 20-35 visitors from the public over the day) as there was no publicity for the event. Nice event, good idea, people need to know about it.
I spent yesterday afternoon (Tuesday) getting ready for my embroidery chapter meeting today. We are starting our projects for the year and I needed to print some things for the projects. I also packed up some items to donate - 3 dresses, 2 ladies suits, a rain coat, a Christmas Santa bowl (not even sure who gave it to us), some souvenir gifts from a friend’s travels, and 2 spare coin counting tube sets - anything gone out of the house is good. I also did my “offsite” data backups for today.
Today I had busy day - the meeting, a trip to the bank to exchange my offsite backups, a trip to Goodwill for the donation, check Post Office box, lunch alone... Then when I came home I went through and finished filling in forms and making copies of papers so we can go tomorrow to a workshop/meeting and make sure our paperwork is done and complete to get a senior discount on our real estate taxes. For once I am not procrastinating as they are due before January 1 - plenty of time to fix any problems or missing items. And now I am writing my post.
Not as bad as some weeks in the past month - at least we do not have to wake early day after day and I see an end in sight. Next week is even a bit looser - dentist tomorrow though.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
If you think that you can not do something which is a large job - then do one small bit of it - a first step, then a bit more. It will go quicker than if you just sit and think that the job is too big. I never thought that I would be able to post this regularly for 6 months, let alone 2 years, but a week’s post at a time I have and I plan to keep doing it for at least another year.
So, how has being a blogger been for me? Well, I appreciate those of you who follow me, but I had expected a larger number of followers. I am not sure if the low numbers are related to lack of interest in my blog or people not finding my blog. For my personal happiness, I presume it is the latter. (Tell your friends - have them tell their friends.) But I am aware it might be the former. My original idea of telling how and where I store things (and why) seemed terribly dry to me when I read the early posts back after posting them, so I switched to more of a week by week story of what I did right, what I did wrong, and my attempts to keep everything up to date and taken care of. It reads better to me and I hope to you. I am also interested in what YOU think - please feel free to reply to the blog itself as well as any posts - do you wonder how I deal with something or other?
September is over and with it I hope I will have a chance to breathe.
I managed to get the needed information to my client from last week. Her fax has never worked and therefore I faxed the needed form to a friend of hers. His fax did not work right in accepting faxes. I tried faxing a number of times - with my husband standing there making noises about how much each attempt was costing us - our home telephone is rarely used for making calls as I have unlimited cell phone minutes, so each call was a “toll call” to NYC, plus the page that was printed each time to tell me the fax did not go through. Since doing something over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of stupidity, I called the client and told her that I would mail her the form. Friday she would not be at work as that evening would be a Jewish holiday and she is closed on the weekend. I telephoned her on Monday and she had received the form and faxed it with needed attachment to the number I had given her - hopefully it was in time for them to process before her monthly fee for minimum use was due to be debited from the account.
I also finished a tax return for another client - it was on extension so it is not late. That was promptly mailed out. I do have one client whose return I have not done - she and her husband owe me information from 3 years ago to do their returns and I keep pushing her as she will lose a sizeable refund if she does not file her 2014 return by April 15 of 2018. (If you have unfiled income tax returns - don’t let that happen to you - if you have not filed a return within 3 years of its due date you will lose any refund due you. Out to the client 2 weeks before it is due.
Last Sunday we had a reenctment event. It was the first time the unit was doing this event - it was at our headquarters, but the building itself was the focus of the event rather than the unit outside with muskets and crafts. The unit commander could not come after he set it up, so husband, who is assistant commander had to deal with everything - which of course means much work for me. I woke a half hour before the alarm was set to go off on Sunday morning - with a terribly ill stomach. Husband started to panic- what would we do? He had to go as he was in charge and he needed me. I told him that he would go to the event in our car - members get to most events 2 hours before it is to start to have everything set up - and I would come later in our van, unless my stomach did not recover. He was not happy at driving there alone, being there alone and, more important, me not being well. I went over where the turns are to get there as he is always asking me when driving there - “Is this where I turn?” at the wrong place. (“Remember, you will pass the diner your sister goes to on the right, then you turn left at the light after the Stop and Shop supermarket is on the left. Then you turn left again after the long stretch of nurseries....”) I managed to get there on time for the actual event. We had a quiet day (depending on who you ask we had 20-35 visitors from the public over the day) as there was no publicity for the event. Nice event, good idea, people need to know about it.
I spent yesterday afternoon (Tuesday) getting ready for my embroidery chapter meeting today. We are starting our projects for the year and I needed to print some things for the projects. I also packed up some items to donate - 3 dresses, 2 ladies suits, a rain coat, a Christmas Santa bowl (not even sure who gave it to us), some souvenir gifts from a friend’s travels, and 2 spare coin counting tube sets - anything gone out of the house is good. I also did my “offsite” data backups for today.
Today I had busy day - the meeting, a trip to the bank to exchange my offsite backups, a trip to Goodwill for the donation, check Post Office box, lunch alone... Then when I came home I went through and finished filling in forms and making copies of papers so we can go tomorrow to a workshop/meeting and make sure our paperwork is done and complete to get a senior discount on our real estate taxes. For once I am not procrastinating as they are due before January 1 - plenty of time to fix any problems or missing items. And now I am writing my post.
Not as bad as some weeks in the past month - at least we do not have to wake early day after day and I see an end in sight. Next week is even a bit looser - dentist tomorrow though.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
If you think that you can not do something which is a large job - then do one small bit of it - a first step, then a bit more. It will go quicker than if you just sit and think that the job is too big. I never thought that I would be able to post this regularly for 6 months, let alone 2 years, but a week’s post at a time I have and I plan to keep doing it for at least another year.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
SAGA OF THE NEW MAIL BOX
Getting things done moves slowly in our house. To give you an idea of how slowly - we have been in the house over 25 years and still have not had a house warming party. Most things do not take that long, but we tend to be over cautions and take our time. We shopped for 3 years before buying a new snowblower - our old one not having been used in decades and was no longer working.
Now some background. For over two decades we had a great Post Office where we live. The mail was delivered with no problem. When we went away for summer vacation and had our mail held, when we picked it up there was no problem and mail delivery was immediately restarted. About 3 years ago we started having problems with our mail delivery - in the past 2 years, when I started keeping track, three items for my accounting business from IRS - with all my personal and business identification information in all three - went astray and never made it here. Two credit card statements - from two different banks - ditto. A few bank statements from assorted banks - ditto. Several pieces of mail - mostly ads, but still they could have been important mail, has shown up having been opened by someone else and then taped closed again - obviously delivered to someone else and opened in error by them, taped closed and dropped back in the mail. We have gotten a number of items addressed to other people and delivered to us. Now, I don’t mean the neighbor next door or down the street - these are addressed to people on streets we have never heard of and we have lived in the immediate area for almost 40 years and husband grew up for another 15 or more years, so these are not streets in the nearby area either. We have been working on switching our mailing address to our Post Office box, which is at a different Post Office than the one our house mail goes through. When we mail items out they go through the Post Office with our box. (Due to the design of the different Post Offices’ coverage areas by community our Post Office is further away from us than two other Post Offices as we live at the far northern end of the coverage area, so we have always used one or the other of these two nearer Post Offices to send out mail.)
When we used to travel by car and stay at hotels we would take several weekend trips during the year and a longer summer vacation (up to 3 weeks when husband was working). We would not have our mail held for the weekend trips - we would leave after Friday’s mail was delivered and take it in before we left and then just Saturday’s and possibly Monday’s mail would be delivered depending on whether we came home Sunday or Monday night. We would have the mail held by the Post Office for summer vacation and then go in, pick up the mail, and restart delivery. (We would not notify the other Post Office to hold the Box mail either, except for the summer as they automatically set aside in the back any excess mail over the size of our box.)
We now tend to travel in the middle of the week instead of the weekends for our short trips - and there are fewer of them. It is easier to get a space at a RV park midweek - a reservation at an RV park generally cannot be canceled close to the date so we tend not to make reservations for short trips until we know for sure that we are going. Also the place we normally go for short trips is a heavy tourist area with a lot of weekend visitors which crowd many of the places we go and annoy husband, so we go midweek instead. Now when we go away the mail three to four days of mail ends up sitting in the box in front of our house. (We tend to leave earlier in the day on the trip as some local main roads are under construction and we have to get to a certain point after the worst of rush hour and before construction starts for the day, so the first day of the trip’s mail is now in the box where before we took it in before we left.) So we now feel more uncomfortable leaving the mail in the box in front of the house while we are away. We don’t want to have the mail held as this has become a problem with our Post Office. The solution? We decided last year that we need to have a locking mailbox for the front of the house.
We have a post mail box, meaning we have the type of box that sits on top of a post, similar to those in more rural areas where the boxes sit along the side of the road so that the postal delivery person (who used to be the “mailman”) can put the mail into the box without leaving his vehicle. However, we have our post and mailbox adjacent to our front door not at the street - just a bit more secure than having the mailbox at the street.
On and off since the beginning of 2016's travel season we have been looking at replacement mail boxes. We picked out one that we liked - it is shaped like a regular post mail box (round top), but locks closed. Somehow that idea got set aside for the winter and nothing was done - not unusual as I mentioned at the start of the post - for us.
About a month or so we again went out looking at mail boxes. This time we decided that box was too small and we were looking at larger rectangular boxes. We have a choice of buying a mail box at Home Depot or Lowes. I guess Ace has them too, but they are more expensive. We made our choice.
Last week husband brings up the subject again - we go to Home Depot and Lowes and compare what they have and the prices. Looking at the box we were planning to get, we started thinking - “Hmmm, does that make it look like there something really exciting in the mail box as it is so large and locked. Will it make it more attractive to someone to break into it?” We decide to get the first mail box which looks more like a regular mail box and might not be more attractive.
Sunday we buy the mail box. Now remember, we are not morning people and our normal Sunday is a trip to Costco, BJs, and a different Walmart than usual in the next county, with lunch at the Costco. So by the time we buy the mail box and head home it around 4 pm. (Can you see where this is going?)
We take the mail box into the garage (and climb over the snow blower which we still have not bought a shed for it to live in and over the leaf blower we used 2 years ago, etc. plus all the power tools set up in this with all in disarray as husband always says “I really have to clean up in here” but we never do). We open the box and check the mail box and it looks fine. It come with 2 matching sets of 2 keys (four keys which each fit both the front and back locks on the box). The keys are there and of course get taken out of the envelope they came in. Logic would say to put one set of keys in one of our pockets and leave the other set of keys in the envelope, but both sets are taken out of the envelope.
First thing to do is remove the old mailbox from the post. We do this very easily - four small screws, two in each of the left and right sides of the mailbox. The old mailbox is set aside in the backyard - just in case this all does not work out.
We had to buy a piece for the mail box which allows it to be on the post, on a different type of post or on a wooden arm (in choice of 2 different directions). So the second thing to do is attach this piece to our post. We open the piece and take out the instructions and find the hardware needed to put it on the type of post we have. This involves putting four LONG screws into the wood of the post - two in the front and two in the back. Now understand, husband has a major assortment of power and hand tools. Problem - the hole in the piece is slightly larger than our post - it will not affect the piece sitting around the post, but the piece has to be level with the top of the post, but slides down it. We both have the same idea - he screws a scrap piece of wood diagonally over the hole and now it sits on the top of the post. We place the piece in position on top of the post. He takes out a battery operated screwdriver and starts screwing one of the back screws through the piece and into the post. It stops about half way in and will not go further. Husband goes and gets a plug in drill and tries - same problem. “I guess I should have drilled a pilot hole.” He unscrews the screw and gets a thin drill bit. The drill bit goes partway in and breaks. So now there is a drill bit in the wood where the screw needs to go. We decide to ignore this screw for now.
He goes to the front and, with a larger drill bit, drills a pilot hole and with the combination of battery operated screwdriver, plug in drill, and hand screwdriver - he finally gets the screw in. Yay! This is repeated on the other front and the other rear screw - these having their own problem as he stand on the flattened (for this purpose) branches of a shrub.. Along the way he looks at his watch and says “so much for dinner” - it will be too late to go out for dinner, as we do on Sunday evenings, when we are done. We can’t stop as it will be too dark to finish later and we won’t have a box for Monday’s mail delivery.
We test the piece and it rocks as it is missing the first screw which we were unable to put in. What to do? I came up with the idea of using the four small screws that we took out of the old mail box and post. The side of the piece to hold the mail box has holes in the side for a different assembly - but that assembly is for the piece to be raised up so the sides overlap the holes. We manage to get these screws into the side holes and the piece no longer rocks.
Third step - putting the mailbox in place. We need a key for this as the bolt heads go inside the mail box. I go back to the garage - I can only find one set of keys. Rather than waste time I figure husband has the other set and this set is plenty to work with. Putting the mailbox in place actually goes rather well. (It does bother me that a security mail box has nuts on the bottom of it connecting it to the connecting piece, which itself is screwed on by accessible screws - so either set of screws can be removed - but that is how it is.) We try the doors and they work - there is room to open the back of the box from the house door (we were worried it was too close to the house).
I then mention the missing keys. He does not have them. We go back into the garage and find them. We go into the house. I immediately take one of the keys and put it onto my key ring - just in case. We have dinner and the evening passes.
Husband suggests that we put up a “decorative” hook in the front hall for a mailbox key to be hung from - “we will look for one”. Oh yes, more time wasted shopping and juggling the key in the interim and how long will that take? Then I remember something which I did not donate when I thought to do so. A nice, small brass plate with a double hook at the bottom. I think we got it as a gift from his sister - that is in the back of my head. It was a bit “Victorian” for our “Georgian” style decor so we did not buy it. But there it is - in the bottom drawer of my desk - wow I even found it exactly where I thought it would be. He likes it and rushes to put it up.
Now we have to put a key on a piece of yarn to hang it up - here’s the single key on a ring - where is the other ring with two keys? (How can I be able to find something I haven’t seen in years on the first try, but a set of keys for something we bought the same day keeps disappearing?) We find them and I put in them with the instructions, etc. to put away. He puts the key on a piece of yarn and hangs it up.
The mail box works! We have taken in mail from it for three days now. It is not a problem to open with the key. Now we can go on a trip and not worry about the mail sitting at home snug in its locking box.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Find something you keep putting off doing - one thing. And do it! Every step forward is something done.
Epilogue -
We had to take the old mail box into the garage due to a MAJOR rain and wind storm Monday. I plan to clean it up a bit and take it to Goodwill on my next trip to same with items to donate. This will keep it out of the garbage and help someone who can use the mail box as its only problem is that we wanted a locking one - the box itself has much life left in it.
Now some background. For over two decades we had a great Post Office where we live. The mail was delivered with no problem. When we went away for summer vacation and had our mail held, when we picked it up there was no problem and mail delivery was immediately restarted. About 3 years ago we started having problems with our mail delivery - in the past 2 years, when I started keeping track, three items for my accounting business from IRS - with all my personal and business identification information in all three - went astray and never made it here. Two credit card statements - from two different banks - ditto. A few bank statements from assorted banks - ditto. Several pieces of mail - mostly ads, but still they could have been important mail, has shown up having been opened by someone else and then taped closed again - obviously delivered to someone else and opened in error by them, taped closed and dropped back in the mail. We have gotten a number of items addressed to other people and delivered to us. Now, I don’t mean the neighbor next door or down the street - these are addressed to people on streets we have never heard of and we have lived in the immediate area for almost 40 years and husband grew up for another 15 or more years, so these are not streets in the nearby area either. We have been working on switching our mailing address to our Post Office box, which is at a different Post Office than the one our house mail goes through. When we mail items out they go through the Post Office with our box. (Due to the design of the different Post Offices’ coverage areas by community our Post Office is further away from us than two other Post Offices as we live at the far northern end of the coverage area, so we have always used one or the other of these two nearer Post Offices to send out mail.)
When we used to travel by car and stay at hotels we would take several weekend trips during the year and a longer summer vacation (up to 3 weeks when husband was working). We would not have our mail held for the weekend trips - we would leave after Friday’s mail was delivered and take it in before we left and then just Saturday’s and possibly Monday’s mail would be delivered depending on whether we came home Sunday or Monday night. We would have the mail held by the Post Office for summer vacation and then go in, pick up the mail, and restart delivery. (We would not notify the other Post Office to hold the Box mail either, except for the summer as they automatically set aside in the back any excess mail over the size of our box.)
We now tend to travel in the middle of the week instead of the weekends for our short trips - and there are fewer of them. It is easier to get a space at a RV park midweek - a reservation at an RV park generally cannot be canceled close to the date so we tend not to make reservations for short trips until we know for sure that we are going. Also the place we normally go for short trips is a heavy tourist area with a lot of weekend visitors which crowd many of the places we go and annoy husband, so we go midweek instead. Now when we go away the mail three to four days of mail ends up sitting in the box in front of our house. (We tend to leave earlier in the day on the trip as some local main roads are under construction and we have to get to a certain point after the worst of rush hour and before construction starts for the day, so the first day of the trip’s mail is now in the box where before we took it in before we left.) So we now feel more uncomfortable leaving the mail in the box in front of the house while we are away. We don’t want to have the mail held as this has become a problem with our Post Office. The solution? We decided last year that we need to have a locking mailbox for the front of the house.
We have a post mail box, meaning we have the type of box that sits on top of a post, similar to those in more rural areas where the boxes sit along the side of the road so that the postal delivery person (who used to be the “mailman”) can put the mail into the box without leaving his vehicle. However, we have our post and mailbox adjacent to our front door not at the street - just a bit more secure than having the mailbox at the street.
On and off since the beginning of 2016's travel season we have been looking at replacement mail boxes. We picked out one that we liked - it is shaped like a regular post mail box (round top), but locks closed. Somehow that idea got set aside for the winter and nothing was done - not unusual as I mentioned at the start of the post - for us.
About a month or so we again went out looking at mail boxes. This time we decided that box was too small and we were looking at larger rectangular boxes. We have a choice of buying a mail box at Home Depot or Lowes. I guess Ace has them too, but they are more expensive. We made our choice.
Last week husband brings up the subject again - we go to Home Depot and Lowes and compare what they have and the prices. Looking at the box we were planning to get, we started thinking - “Hmmm, does that make it look like there something really exciting in the mail box as it is so large and locked. Will it make it more attractive to someone to break into it?” We decide to get the first mail box which looks more like a regular mail box and might not be more attractive.
Sunday we buy the mail box. Now remember, we are not morning people and our normal Sunday is a trip to Costco, BJs, and a different Walmart than usual in the next county, with lunch at the Costco. So by the time we buy the mail box and head home it around 4 pm. (Can you see where this is going?)
We take the mail box into the garage (and climb over the snow blower which we still have not bought a shed for it to live in and over the leaf blower we used 2 years ago, etc. plus all the power tools set up in this with all in disarray as husband always says “I really have to clean up in here” but we never do). We open the box and check the mail box and it looks fine. It come with 2 matching sets of 2 keys (four keys which each fit both the front and back locks on the box). The keys are there and of course get taken out of the envelope they came in. Logic would say to put one set of keys in one of our pockets and leave the other set of keys in the envelope, but both sets are taken out of the envelope.
First thing to do is remove the old mailbox from the post. We do this very easily - four small screws, two in each of the left and right sides of the mailbox. The old mailbox is set aside in the backyard - just in case this all does not work out.
We had to buy a piece for the mail box which allows it to be on the post, on a different type of post or on a wooden arm (in choice of 2 different directions). So the second thing to do is attach this piece to our post. We open the piece and take out the instructions and find the hardware needed to put it on the type of post we have. This involves putting four LONG screws into the wood of the post - two in the front and two in the back. Now understand, husband has a major assortment of power and hand tools. Problem - the hole in the piece is slightly larger than our post - it will not affect the piece sitting around the post, but the piece has to be level with the top of the post, but slides down it. We both have the same idea - he screws a scrap piece of wood diagonally over the hole and now it sits on the top of the post. We place the piece in position on top of the post. He takes out a battery operated screwdriver and starts screwing one of the back screws through the piece and into the post. It stops about half way in and will not go further. Husband goes and gets a plug in drill and tries - same problem. “I guess I should have drilled a pilot hole.” He unscrews the screw and gets a thin drill bit. The drill bit goes partway in and breaks. So now there is a drill bit in the wood where the screw needs to go. We decide to ignore this screw for now.
He goes to the front and, with a larger drill bit, drills a pilot hole and with the combination of battery operated screwdriver, plug in drill, and hand screwdriver - he finally gets the screw in. Yay! This is repeated on the other front and the other rear screw - these having their own problem as he stand on the flattened (for this purpose) branches of a shrub.. Along the way he looks at his watch and says “so much for dinner” - it will be too late to go out for dinner, as we do on Sunday evenings, when we are done. We can’t stop as it will be too dark to finish later and we won’t have a box for Monday’s mail delivery.
We test the piece and it rocks as it is missing the first screw which we were unable to put in. What to do? I came up with the idea of using the four small screws that we took out of the old mail box and post. The side of the piece to hold the mail box has holes in the side for a different assembly - but that assembly is for the piece to be raised up so the sides overlap the holes. We manage to get these screws into the side holes and the piece no longer rocks.
Third step - putting the mailbox in place. We need a key for this as the bolt heads go inside the mail box. I go back to the garage - I can only find one set of keys. Rather than waste time I figure husband has the other set and this set is plenty to work with. Putting the mailbox in place actually goes rather well. (It does bother me that a security mail box has nuts on the bottom of it connecting it to the connecting piece, which itself is screwed on by accessible screws - so either set of screws can be removed - but that is how it is.) We try the doors and they work - there is room to open the back of the box from the house door (we were worried it was too close to the house).
I then mention the missing keys. He does not have them. We go back into the garage and find them. We go into the house. I immediately take one of the keys and put it onto my key ring - just in case. We have dinner and the evening passes.
Husband suggests that we put up a “decorative” hook in the front hall for a mailbox key to be hung from - “we will look for one”. Oh yes, more time wasted shopping and juggling the key in the interim and how long will that take? Then I remember something which I did not donate when I thought to do so. A nice, small brass plate with a double hook at the bottom. I think we got it as a gift from his sister - that is in the back of my head. It was a bit “Victorian” for our “Georgian” style decor so we did not buy it. But there it is - in the bottom drawer of my desk - wow I even found it exactly where I thought it would be. He likes it and rushes to put it up.
Now we have to put a key on a piece of yarn to hang it up - here’s the single key on a ring - where is the other ring with two keys? (How can I be able to find something I haven’t seen in years on the first try, but a set of keys for something we bought the same day keeps disappearing?) We find them and I put in them with the instructions, etc. to put away. He puts the key on a piece of yarn and hangs it up.
The mail box works! We have taken in mail from it for three days now. It is not a problem to open with the key. Now we can go on a trip and not worry about the mail sitting at home snug in its locking box.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Find something you keep putting off doing - one thing. And do it! Every step forward is something done.
Epilogue -
We had to take the old mail box into the garage due to a MAJOR rain and wind storm Monday. I plan to clean it up a bit and take it to Goodwill on my next trip to same with items to donate. This will keep it out of the garbage and help someone who can use the mail box as its only problem is that we wanted a locking one - the box itself has much life left in it.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
CHRISTMAS LIGHTS AND THE WEEK THAT FOLLOWED
We went out last Thursday to put up our Christmas lights. We also had some errands to run, but since we wanted to deal with the lights while there was still daylight we did the lights first.
Husband decided that the fallen leaves would catch fire from the lights and we had to rake and bag them first. This exhausted both of us before we even started with the lights. Sunny and 59 degrees which had been expected, was actually terribly overcast and colder.
Of course 3 of the 8 strands of lights only had half their bulbs still working - although they had been tested before being stored. We figured we would put up what we have and then go and buy replacements while running errands. The lights go on bushes and 2 small trees and a strand of red bulbs with white cords go around our white mail box post (which is at our front door, not along the road) which gives it a candy caneish look. Hooked up the extension cords, plugged it all in. I went to the basement and turned on the breaker for that circuit and turned on the timer - no lights. Husband comes in and checks to make sure I did it right. (I would say because he thinks I am an idiot who cannot turn on the breaker and timer, but I won't.) He decides that maybe the breaker is broken - it feels funny. Just in case it is the outlet (which hangs oddly since our siding was replaced - but worked fine last time we mowed the grass in July) he decides to disassemble the outlet and check the wiring. It is now dark out and getting colder.
He cannot disassemble the outlets as one of the screws stripped . He then spends an hour attempting to take out the outlets. He then gives up and spends another hour and a half trying to put the front plate (which covers the outlets as they are outside) back on as the entire assembly now is loose due to the stripped screw. We finally give up and put tape around the box - figuring we will be calling an electrician to deal with it all. It is now 6 pm. He goes back into the basement in frustration and finds out that we turned on the wrong breaker! When we bought the house there was one outside set of outlets in the back yard. The breaker was labeled "outside outlet". We later had another one added in front of the house (mostly for Christmas lights) which is labeled "front outside outlet". Yes, I forgot which one was specially labeled and turned on the back yard outlets! I showed him which one was correct. He labeled the other one as “rear outside outlets”. We had disassembled the extension cords to prevent problems and will have to plug everything in again and see if the lights come on - on Saturday. No he did not get mad or yell at me. I was crying too hard from being so stupid and making the problem and wasting so much time for him to do so.
We normally would put up a wreath on each door and swags (all artificial) from the lights on either side of the door - but that would wait. (So far we have put up one wreath - it is new. We put battery operated lights on it and it fits between our front door and the storm door and is lighter so it can go up with magnetic hooks instead of having to run fishing line over the front storm door to hold it outside the storm door . We still have not put out a wreath on the side door or the swags - not sure if he will do so or not.)
We then set out to the PO and the bank. As we approached the corner where the PO is located there were police cars and their lights all over at the corner to the PO. There is a very small "town center" in a pool park there and apparently this was the Christmas tree lighting ceremony. We managed to get through the mess and had to go aways to get a parking space for the PO.
We then had to pull into a side road and turn around, back into the mess, which now also had fire engines with lights and sirens on, to go to the bank. When we left the bank husband was going to go in a different direction to avoid the mess, forgot to and we were headed back there. Instead we kept going to a different main street which goes to our house. There were police cars all over with police directing traffic and apparently we could not turn towards our house - the street was closed either for an emergency or to put up Christmas decorations as there were "bucket trucks" with men in the buckets. We had to drive back to the bank a different way, drive past it and then go the way he intended originally. 15 minutes of errands took over an hour, so it was now 7 pm.
I then made dinner and called him and he had gotten a work online conversation and was on for an hour - to 9 pm. Just as I finished reheating the soup for dinner (and the rest was still reheating) my mom called and I had to tell her I couldn't talk. If you think I write a lot - a call between mom and me can run 2 hours.
Friday we went to Lancaster, PA area for a day trip - mostly Green Dragon Farmer's (and merchant's) market and dinner at Dutchway buffet - owned by and adjacent to their supermarket. Picked up the needed Christmas lights during a stop at Walmart there before our trip home.
Saturday we took the snow blower out of the box and assembled it. We then put up the rest of the lights after making sure that when we used the correct circuit breaker the other lights came on.
We bought gas for the snow blower on Monday and also filled the tank in our van - we don’t drive it a lot, so we don’t fill it a lot, so we figured we would do both at once. On Tuesday we started it and it started fine. Unfortunately we found out over the weekend that we cannot get the small shed we wanted. It would not come for 3 weeks and by then it would be too cold to assemble it. For now the snow blower is in the garage - sitting just inside the door, ready to go. But if it snows we have to shovel our way out to the garage. One idea husband has it to pick up the snow blower and put it in our tiny side porch (really just a covered entryway) - which means I have to clear it out - but we don’t know if we could carry it that much.
Today was my embroidery club meeting. As I was getting ready last night for the meeting it suddenly dawned on me that this is the last meeting of the year. Why is that significant? I never got the paperwork to reserve the meeting room for 2017. I called this morning and found out that the person in charge of the room reservations changed and I was not on the list she was given for who had to have renewals sent to them - “everyone else will call for them”. Luckily this room is not in great demand and there should be no problem - she is sending me the paperwork to do.
I also got rid of 2 months worth of soda bottles today and made about $2 in returned deposits - which I then spent plus more on a few grocery items we needed. I went to Goodwill and donated 3 of our suitcases - more to go there in the future. I also donated my good coat. I love this coat - it comfortable, nice fabric. It is the only piece of clothing I have ever heard my mom say I looked good in. Why did I get rid of it? It was a hard decision, but I have not worn it since 2009 when we had the bed bugs. It is a bit on the long side and I would worry about picking up bed bugs when walking on stairs in NYC if I wore it to work. When we go out to dinner for holidays or such - much rarer now - I sit on my jacket and the coat would be too bulky, so I decided it was time for it to have a nice life with someone else who needs and will use it. I kept it in its bag until the last minute so I would not change my mind. I added to all this a rotating CD rack husband has not used in years and said we should get rid of. Oh - don’t forget to go through all pockets in clothes and suitcases - I did and found copies of our driver’s licenses in one of the suitcases.
So another week is gone. I have put out a minimal amount of Christmas decorations - but I did put RV stuff in our RV to get it out of the dining room until next spring - more of it to go out yet. I also put away all of the various items that were out loose of our reenacting stuff - the dining room is on its way to being ready to decorate.
What did you get done this week? Even a small amount of things done is something done. Jump in and do something.
Husband decided that the fallen leaves would catch fire from the lights and we had to rake and bag them first. This exhausted both of us before we even started with the lights. Sunny and 59 degrees which had been expected, was actually terribly overcast and colder.
Of course 3 of the 8 strands of lights only had half their bulbs still working - although they had been tested before being stored. We figured we would put up what we have and then go and buy replacements while running errands. The lights go on bushes and 2 small trees and a strand of red bulbs with white cords go around our white mail box post (which is at our front door, not along the road) which gives it a candy caneish look. Hooked up the extension cords, plugged it all in. I went to the basement and turned on the breaker for that circuit and turned on the timer - no lights. Husband comes in and checks to make sure I did it right. (I would say because he thinks I am an idiot who cannot turn on the breaker and timer, but I won't.) He decides that maybe the breaker is broken - it feels funny. Just in case it is the outlet (which hangs oddly since our siding was replaced - but worked fine last time we mowed the grass in July) he decides to disassemble the outlet and check the wiring. It is now dark out and getting colder.
He cannot disassemble the outlets as one of the screws stripped . He then spends an hour attempting to take out the outlets. He then gives up and spends another hour and a half trying to put the front plate (which covers the outlets as they are outside) back on as the entire assembly now is loose due to the stripped screw. We finally give up and put tape around the box - figuring we will be calling an electrician to deal with it all. It is now 6 pm. He goes back into the basement in frustration and finds out that we turned on the wrong breaker! When we bought the house there was one outside set of outlets in the back yard. The breaker was labeled "outside outlet". We later had another one added in front of the house (mostly for Christmas lights) which is labeled "front outside outlet". Yes, I forgot which one was specially labeled and turned on the back yard outlets! I showed him which one was correct. He labeled the other one as “rear outside outlets”. We had disassembled the extension cords to prevent problems and will have to plug everything in again and see if the lights come on - on Saturday. No he did not get mad or yell at me. I was crying too hard from being so stupid and making the problem and wasting so much time for him to do so.
We normally would put up a wreath on each door and swags (all artificial) from the lights on either side of the door - but that would wait. (So far we have put up one wreath - it is new. We put battery operated lights on it and it fits between our front door and the storm door and is lighter so it can go up with magnetic hooks instead of having to run fishing line over the front storm door to hold it outside the storm door . We still have not put out a wreath on the side door or the swags - not sure if he will do so or not.)
We then set out to the PO and the bank. As we approached the corner where the PO is located there were police cars and their lights all over at the corner to the PO. There is a very small "town center" in a pool park there and apparently this was the Christmas tree lighting ceremony. We managed to get through the mess and had to go aways to get a parking space for the PO.
We then had to pull into a side road and turn around, back into the mess, which now also had fire engines with lights and sirens on, to go to the bank. When we left the bank husband was going to go in a different direction to avoid the mess, forgot to and we were headed back there. Instead we kept going to a different main street which goes to our house. There were police cars all over with police directing traffic and apparently we could not turn towards our house - the street was closed either for an emergency or to put up Christmas decorations as there were "bucket trucks" with men in the buckets. We had to drive back to the bank a different way, drive past it and then go the way he intended originally. 15 minutes of errands took over an hour, so it was now 7 pm.
I then made dinner and called him and he had gotten a work online conversation and was on for an hour - to 9 pm. Just as I finished reheating the soup for dinner (and the rest was still reheating) my mom called and I had to tell her I couldn't talk. If you think I write a lot - a call between mom and me can run 2 hours.
Friday we went to Lancaster, PA area for a day trip - mostly Green Dragon Farmer's (and merchant's) market and dinner at Dutchway buffet - owned by and adjacent to their supermarket. Picked up the needed Christmas lights during a stop at Walmart there before our trip home.
Saturday we took the snow blower out of the box and assembled it. We then put up the rest of the lights after making sure that when we used the correct circuit breaker the other lights came on.
We bought gas for the snow blower on Monday and also filled the tank in our van - we don’t drive it a lot, so we don’t fill it a lot, so we figured we would do both at once. On Tuesday we started it and it started fine. Unfortunately we found out over the weekend that we cannot get the small shed we wanted. It would not come for 3 weeks and by then it would be too cold to assemble it. For now the snow blower is in the garage - sitting just inside the door, ready to go. But if it snows we have to shovel our way out to the garage. One idea husband has it to pick up the snow blower and put it in our tiny side porch (really just a covered entryway) - which means I have to clear it out - but we don’t know if we could carry it that much.
Today was my embroidery club meeting. As I was getting ready last night for the meeting it suddenly dawned on me that this is the last meeting of the year. Why is that significant? I never got the paperwork to reserve the meeting room for 2017. I called this morning and found out that the person in charge of the room reservations changed and I was not on the list she was given for who had to have renewals sent to them - “everyone else will call for them”. Luckily this room is not in great demand and there should be no problem - she is sending me the paperwork to do.
I also got rid of 2 months worth of soda bottles today and made about $2 in returned deposits - which I then spent plus more on a few grocery items we needed. I went to Goodwill and donated 3 of our suitcases - more to go there in the future. I also donated my good coat. I love this coat - it comfortable, nice fabric. It is the only piece of clothing I have ever heard my mom say I looked good in. Why did I get rid of it? It was a hard decision, but I have not worn it since 2009 when we had the bed bugs. It is a bit on the long side and I would worry about picking up bed bugs when walking on stairs in NYC if I wore it to work. When we go out to dinner for holidays or such - much rarer now - I sit on my jacket and the coat would be too bulky, so I decided it was time for it to have a nice life with someone else who needs and will use it. I kept it in its bag until the last minute so I would not change my mind. I added to all this a rotating CD rack husband has not used in years and said we should get rid of. Oh - don’t forget to go through all pockets in clothes and suitcases - I did and found copies of our driver’s licenses in one of the suitcases.
So another week is gone. I have put out a minimal amount of Christmas decorations - but I did put RV stuff in our RV to get it out of the dining room until next spring - more of it to go out yet. I also put away all of the various items that were out loose of our reenacting stuff - the dining room is on its way to being ready to decorate.
What did you get done this week? Even a small amount of things done is something done. Jump in and do something.
Thursday, December 1, 2016
THANKSGIVING IS OVER - CHRISTMAS IS COMING
Well, Thanksgiving is behind us. Now we move on to the December holidays. While due to differences in religion, we celebrate both Christmas and Chanukah, 99% of the decorating is for Christmas.
Normally we would have put our outside decorations up this past week, but due to running around to find a turkey and shop for Thanksgiving dinner at the last minute, we did not get a chance to do so. We are currently having rain. We plan to put up the outside decorations on Thursday - it is not suppose to be raining then and it is suppose to go to a relatively “toasty” 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
We put strands of lights on our larger bushes and 2 small trees in front of our house. We put a wreath (artificial) each on our front and side doors. We also have swags (again artificial) which we hang from our light fixtures on either side of the front door. Last year we added a strand of red lights around our white mail box post - gives the look of, sort of, a candy cane. We used to have wreaths on our lower front windows and swags under them, but we cannot do so since we had our windows and siding replaced. The outside lights are controlled by a timer. We have one in our basement for the outlets that they are plugged into - since they are on their own circuit breaker this is a heavy duty timer, which works for the circuit. We also put battery operated candles in our front windows which go on for 6 hours a night automatically. We used to have plug in window candles, but when we replaced the windows, we found that there was a ledge of plastic on the inside of the window which meant that the candle had trouble staying on the window sill and leaned against the window blinds and would have melted them - so we replaced them with these LED candles -no heat so they do not melt the shades.
This past weekend I took out my Christmas dishes. These are not fancy china to be used for company. They are everyday dishes. I use them for dinner during the holidays. I also have Christmas glasses - they were a “spend this amount and get a gift” that I got when I bought a baby gift for a friend decades ago. I keep the dishes and glasses in their original boxes in the gas meter closet in our basement and wash them before I use them each year. I have only 3 glasses - the fourth one broke - and I keep a small 2 piece nativity set in the 4th space in the box, so the nativity goes out when I take out the glasses. I only take out 2 of the glasses and 2 of the cups to the dishes as I am the only one who uses them. Husband has certain plastic glasses he prefers and I put one out for him as it not worth insisting that he use the holiday stuff.
Husband, as I have mentioned before, got a loom last Christmas. It is a good size piece of furniture, 32 inches wide and about the same size deep. It is set up in the living room as are various related items, including a small table and large plastic boxes of yarn/finished pieces. It does not fill the room, but since it sits in the middle of the room, it takes up much of the floor space. When husband set it up last January, I told him that I expected the living room back after Thanksgiving until January so that I could decorate. I never really expected same, and I will be decorating around the loom etc. when I decorate as I got a blank stare when I asked when the loom was being stored for the season. Our dining room has additional items for his weaving, mostly items used to wash the woven items after they are made (to draw the threads together into fabric) which is done in our kitchen. At some point the items other than the loom will have to be moved somewhere - my guess is the walkways of our studio behind the kitchen. The nativity mentioned above goes into a display case in a corner of the living room - normally it is the center of the shelf. Right now it is on a corner of the shelf as I could not open the door to the cabinet due to the weaving boxes stored adjacent to the cabinet, but managed to get it open enough to put the nativity just inside the door. I will move it when I move the boxes elsewhere - really, they have to moved or no tree.
The dining room also has stuff which needs to go out to our RV. (This is all the stuff I had to move to use the dining room table last week.) The last chance we figure to use the RV is this coming weekend and we are pretty sure we will not - then all will go out there for winter storage. It is stuff that is used seasonally in the RV - mostly for cold weather travel - and has to be stored in the house when not being used in the RV.
Why does the dining room have to be cleared out to decorate the living room? Because there is a good sized wooden box piece of furniture in the living room where the tree goes. Husband made this some years ago. It looks like what was called a “hope chest” for a young woman to store the items she made for when she got married. This one, however, holds DVDs. Instead of the top lifting the front drops down and drawers come out to hold the DVDs. It is on wheels (we knew we had to move it back and forth to the dining room once a year) and is rolled to the far wall of the dining room (where the table normally is and all the stuff to deal with is now) and stays there for the season with the table in the center of the room where normal people put it all the time.
I admit to still having Thanksgiving decorations out. I have a small light up “house in a tree trunk” which I painted some years ago and also painted a ceramic bear family and their guests coming to the house. I have since added some small purchased bears. Every year I set it up with the bear family at the house and the other bears coming there. This year after the holiday I had the idea to turn the visitors around and they are now “on their way home”. There are a few other small items to be put away also - it all fits in one box. I plan on it all being stored by the end of the week - it only took 15 minutes to put out.
I have large plastic boxes of stuff to put out for Christmas in the basement. We used to keep it in the garage, but we are getting older - hard to climb up and take out and store the boxes - and the boxes are getting heavier, so I found a spot in the basement to store them. There are decorations for the living room, front hall, dining room and kitchen as well as the ornaments for the trees and my teddy bear Christmas village figurines, buildings, etc.
More on all that in future posts - or I would have nothing to post. We bought a new snow blower Monday. We cannot find anyone who does “residential snow removal” and have to be able to do it on our own. Our old snow blower is probably around 30 years old and is large and heavy. We tried starting it over the weekend and it did not start, although it did last summer when we tried it. We had planned on buying this one anyway as it is hard to get to the other one in back of the house and this one, being smaller, we figure we can store it in a small plastic shed in front of our side door. We still have to get the shed and assemble and try out (at least that it starts and moves) the new blower. Husband is researching on what may be wrong with the old one as he wants it as a backup. They were surprised at the (large home big box) store at which we bought the snow blower that we were buying one. I guess everyone else waits until it snows - when it is too late.
I wanted to talk about holiday shopping. Did you go running out on Black Friday or even Thanksgiving? Visit your local stores for Small Business Saturday (started by that so warm hearted American Express credit card company)? Sit all day at work on Monday for Cyber Monday?
We did none of these things. With the exception this year of a TV which husband thought was a good deal (not that we bought/are buying one) which is still on sale at that large box store everyone hates, we have never seen anything worth running for the deal. In addition we don’t buy large amounts of gifts - or stuff for ourselves - for the holidays or otherwise. Are we grinches? No. Husband’s 2 nieces (under 20 years old) always get Christmas gifts from us which we buy. My niece and nephews are in the mid 20's and we mail them checks for Chanukah. Some years ago we agreed with my family not to exchange gifts between the adults. Every year I bought my sister a sweater at a reasonably priced department store (the one with the tool department) with the return card from the gift she had bought me the year before and she would buy me something there also - I was pretty sure with the return card from the sweater I had given her the year before. Gradually this mostly happened with husband and his small extended family also - which was an exchange of cash for check any way.) Husband buys himself a few small items which catch his eye - I then wrap them and Santa puts them under the tree. Generally I don’t get anything. If I do it is a book or a bear item we found on sale during the year and put away until Christmas (one year I forgot we were doing so and read half the book before I remembered). In case you have not figured it out - I have a passion for teddy bears and some of their friends. I believe that a gift should be a token, not an overwhelming “LOOK AT THIS”. The spending of more money for a bigger or more expensive gift does not mean that one is loved or appreciated more - just that someone spent more money, which chances are means they are further into debt than they should be. Plus, more and bigger items mean more clutter in the house!
Speaking of clutter - this is a good time of year to pass along by donation items you no longer need or want which are taking up room in your house. I am planning on donating my winter coat - I have not worn it in years and due to weight loss, I am not even sure it fits anymore. I plan to add to it some dresses I never wear and if we get a chance to go through them - most of the luggage we have as we don’t use luggage with the RV. We will each keep one suitcase and will also keep a rolling backpack. The backpack and a soft bag should fit in the other bag.
So as you are start getting ready this year - remember, whatever you buy or get has to fit somewhere in your home.
Normally we would have put our outside decorations up this past week, but due to running around to find a turkey and shop for Thanksgiving dinner at the last minute, we did not get a chance to do so. We are currently having rain. We plan to put up the outside decorations on Thursday - it is not suppose to be raining then and it is suppose to go to a relatively “toasty” 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
We put strands of lights on our larger bushes and 2 small trees in front of our house. We put a wreath (artificial) each on our front and side doors. We also have swags (again artificial) which we hang from our light fixtures on either side of the front door. Last year we added a strand of red lights around our white mail box post - gives the look of, sort of, a candy cane. We used to have wreaths on our lower front windows and swags under them, but we cannot do so since we had our windows and siding replaced. The outside lights are controlled by a timer. We have one in our basement for the outlets that they are plugged into - since they are on their own circuit breaker this is a heavy duty timer, which works for the circuit. We also put battery operated candles in our front windows which go on for 6 hours a night automatically. We used to have plug in window candles, but when we replaced the windows, we found that there was a ledge of plastic on the inside of the window which meant that the candle had trouble staying on the window sill and leaned against the window blinds and would have melted them - so we replaced them with these LED candles -no heat so they do not melt the shades.
This past weekend I took out my Christmas dishes. These are not fancy china to be used for company. They are everyday dishes. I use them for dinner during the holidays. I also have Christmas glasses - they were a “spend this amount and get a gift” that I got when I bought a baby gift for a friend decades ago. I keep the dishes and glasses in their original boxes in the gas meter closet in our basement and wash them before I use them each year. I have only 3 glasses - the fourth one broke - and I keep a small 2 piece nativity set in the 4th space in the box, so the nativity goes out when I take out the glasses. I only take out 2 of the glasses and 2 of the cups to the dishes as I am the only one who uses them. Husband has certain plastic glasses he prefers and I put one out for him as it not worth insisting that he use the holiday stuff.
Husband, as I have mentioned before, got a loom last Christmas. It is a good size piece of furniture, 32 inches wide and about the same size deep. It is set up in the living room as are various related items, including a small table and large plastic boxes of yarn/finished pieces. It does not fill the room, but since it sits in the middle of the room, it takes up much of the floor space. When husband set it up last January, I told him that I expected the living room back after Thanksgiving until January so that I could decorate. I never really expected same, and I will be decorating around the loom etc. when I decorate as I got a blank stare when I asked when the loom was being stored for the season. Our dining room has additional items for his weaving, mostly items used to wash the woven items after they are made (to draw the threads together into fabric) which is done in our kitchen. At some point the items other than the loom will have to be moved somewhere - my guess is the walkways of our studio behind the kitchen. The nativity mentioned above goes into a display case in a corner of the living room - normally it is the center of the shelf. Right now it is on a corner of the shelf as I could not open the door to the cabinet due to the weaving boxes stored adjacent to the cabinet, but managed to get it open enough to put the nativity just inside the door. I will move it when I move the boxes elsewhere - really, they have to moved or no tree.
The dining room also has stuff which needs to go out to our RV. (This is all the stuff I had to move to use the dining room table last week.) The last chance we figure to use the RV is this coming weekend and we are pretty sure we will not - then all will go out there for winter storage. It is stuff that is used seasonally in the RV - mostly for cold weather travel - and has to be stored in the house when not being used in the RV.
Why does the dining room have to be cleared out to decorate the living room? Because there is a good sized wooden box piece of furniture in the living room where the tree goes. Husband made this some years ago. It looks like what was called a “hope chest” for a young woman to store the items she made for when she got married. This one, however, holds DVDs. Instead of the top lifting the front drops down and drawers come out to hold the DVDs. It is on wheels (we knew we had to move it back and forth to the dining room once a year) and is rolled to the far wall of the dining room (where the table normally is and all the stuff to deal with is now) and stays there for the season with the table in the center of the room where normal people put it all the time.
I admit to still having Thanksgiving decorations out. I have a small light up “house in a tree trunk” which I painted some years ago and also painted a ceramic bear family and their guests coming to the house. I have since added some small purchased bears. Every year I set it up with the bear family at the house and the other bears coming there. This year after the holiday I had the idea to turn the visitors around and they are now “on their way home”. There are a few other small items to be put away also - it all fits in one box. I plan on it all being stored by the end of the week - it only took 15 minutes to put out.
I have large plastic boxes of stuff to put out for Christmas in the basement. We used to keep it in the garage, but we are getting older - hard to climb up and take out and store the boxes - and the boxes are getting heavier, so I found a spot in the basement to store them. There are decorations for the living room, front hall, dining room and kitchen as well as the ornaments for the trees and my teddy bear Christmas village figurines, buildings, etc.
More on all that in future posts - or I would have nothing to post. We bought a new snow blower Monday. We cannot find anyone who does “residential snow removal” and have to be able to do it on our own. Our old snow blower is probably around 30 years old and is large and heavy. We tried starting it over the weekend and it did not start, although it did last summer when we tried it. We had planned on buying this one anyway as it is hard to get to the other one in back of the house and this one, being smaller, we figure we can store it in a small plastic shed in front of our side door. We still have to get the shed and assemble and try out (at least that it starts and moves) the new blower. Husband is researching on what may be wrong with the old one as he wants it as a backup. They were surprised at the (large home big box) store at which we bought the snow blower that we were buying one. I guess everyone else waits until it snows - when it is too late.
I wanted to talk about holiday shopping. Did you go running out on Black Friday or even Thanksgiving? Visit your local stores for Small Business Saturday (started by that so warm hearted American Express credit card company)? Sit all day at work on Monday for Cyber Monday?
We did none of these things. With the exception this year of a TV which husband thought was a good deal (not that we bought/are buying one) which is still on sale at that large box store everyone hates, we have never seen anything worth running for the deal. In addition we don’t buy large amounts of gifts - or stuff for ourselves - for the holidays or otherwise. Are we grinches? No. Husband’s 2 nieces (under 20 years old) always get Christmas gifts from us which we buy. My niece and nephews are in the mid 20's and we mail them checks for Chanukah. Some years ago we agreed with my family not to exchange gifts between the adults. Every year I bought my sister a sweater at a reasonably priced department store (the one with the tool department) with the return card from the gift she had bought me the year before and she would buy me something there also - I was pretty sure with the return card from the sweater I had given her the year before. Gradually this mostly happened with husband and his small extended family also - which was an exchange of cash for check any way.) Husband buys himself a few small items which catch his eye - I then wrap them and Santa puts them under the tree. Generally I don’t get anything. If I do it is a book or a bear item we found on sale during the year and put away until Christmas (one year I forgot we were doing so and read half the book before I remembered). In case you have not figured it out - I have a passion for teddy bears and some of their friends. I believe that a gift should be a token, not an overwhelming “LOOK AT THIS”. The spending of more money for a bigger or more expensive gift does not mean that one is loved or appreciated more - just that someone spent more money, which chances are means they are further into debt than they should be. Plus, more and bigger items mean more clutter in the house!
Speaking of clutter - this is a good time of year to pass along by donation items you no longer need or want which are taking up room in your house. I am planning on donating my winter coat - I have not worn it in years and due to weight loss, I am not even sure it fits anymore. I plan to add to it some dresses I never wear and if we get a chance to go through them - most of the luggage we have as we don’t use luggage with the RV. We will each keep one suitcase and will also keep a rolling backpack. The backpack and a soft bag should fit in the other bag.
So as you are start getting ready this year - remember, whatever you buy or get has to fit somewhere in your home.
Thursday, March 31, 2016
GATHERING PAPERS FOR INCOME TAXES - PART 2
Last week I talked about collecting paperwork for your income for your income tax. This week I am going to talk about collecting paperwork for the deductions (subtractions) from your income tax. While most deductions can be only taken if you itemize (list on Schedule A) your deductions, some can be taken even if you do not. I would also like to explain “deductions” and “credits”. A deduction will decrease your taxable income. A credit will directly decrease the amount of tax you owe.
Paperwork for deductions is harder to collect and organize than that for income because while most of the income papers come to you at the end of the year, the paperwork for deductions is ongoing through out the year. Remember the envelope I suggested you set up? Proof of your deductions should also go into the envelope - if you start the envelope for the year in January you can add in the papers as you go through the year. Even if you were not able to itemize your expenses last year drop the related paperwork in the envelope - you never know.
Again, nothing in this blog is intended to be income tax advice and you should always consult your tax advisor/preparer for what deductions you can take and what documentation you need.
The first type of deduction is medical. This includes medical insurance, doctors, dentists, laboratory fees, prescriptions (generally not over the counter medications), hospitals & other procedures, eyeglasses, hearing aids, dentures, braces (tooth and otherwise) etc. You may have canceled checks, credit card slips, receipts for payments, statements from your medical insurance, etc. Drop them into the envelope as you get them. Get a color ink pen and whenever you pay anything which can be taken as a deduction on your taxes put a mark in your checkbook and/or next to the listing on your bank statement so you can easily find the amounts you spent which are tax deductible at the end of the year. Keep track of your mileage for medical trips or keep receipts from public transportation as you can deduct the cost of the trips. There is a mileage rate set every year by IRS, lower than that for business, specifically for medical trips, so if you know how many miles you traveled during the year for same, you can deduct for same. Medical expenses for “you” includes those for your spouse and anyone from your household you who you claim as a dependant (list) on your tax return.
The next type of deduction is taxes. If you pay state/local income taxes, real estate taxes, depending on your state - personal property taxes, car personal property taxes (different from car registration) and other similar taxes they are deductible. If you buy a large item during the year (such as a car) you want a record of the sales tax you paid on it. Again, copies of checks (or marked items on statements and/or in checkbook), paid bills, etc. should be kept. If your locality allows you to request a paid bill - get it (I know that all I have to do to get same is to check a box on the slip I send with the real estate tax payment).
Next is mortgage interest. There are limits and requirements, but most interest on your home (and a second home) mortgage is deductible. You should receive a form 1098 at the beginning of the next year (around when you get your W2 and 1099s) showing the amount of interest you paid during the year. It may also show the real estate taxes and/or home owners’ insurance your mortgage company/bank paid for you. If you have more than one mortgage you should receive a 1098 from each of them (whether you have multiple mortgages on the same house or you sold your house during the year and had mortgages on the new and old house or there is one on each of several houses you own.) The insurance is not deductible, but the form can be used to show proof of the amount of real estate taxes you paid. If you live in a coop you may receive one of these from your coop showing your share of what the coop paid, as well as a second one from your personal loan on your coop. Guess what? Drop the 1098(s) in your envelope.
Charitable contributions? The government wants us to be generous to what we call charities (they call them not for profit, tax exempt organizations). This includes a large variety of organizations from large (such as the American Cancer Society) to medium size, local (your church or other house of worship) to small (a foundation set up for the family of a firefighter who died for example). One thing that they all have in common is that they have registered with IRS and have been declared to be a not for profit, tax exempt organization. IRS has a list online - https://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Exempt-Organizations-Select-Check
If an organization is not on this list you can not deduct contributions to it. This includes the dollar you give the homeless man or woman on the corner. (It is generous of you to do so and I am not telling you not to, but you cannot deduct it.) Again, you need proof of the amount you donated - our old friends the record of the check to them or a credit card record of money donated, etc. These again go into the envelope. Some organizations, such as churches or synagogues or mosques will send you at the end of the year what you have donated during the year - if you are donating cash to your church there is usually an envelope you can put it in with your name or other information so that at the end of the year they can send you a letter with how much you have donated during the year including the cash. (What you pay for items you purchase at the bazaar, rummage sale, etc. during the year are not deductible.)
You can donate other than cash. If you donate items to an organization (you know the stuff you are getting rid of while decluttering and organizing your home) - Goodwill, Salvation Army, and St. Vincent dePaul being the more common ones I know - they should provide you with a receipt for your donations. When I do this I make a list of what I am bringing and how many bags, etc. they are in. They will then give a receipt saying, for example, 3 bags, and I will attach my list to the receipt and drop in the envelope (well in my case it is a file, but for you - your envelope). The organizations are not allowed to provide a value to you for the items donated. When you are doing your taxes or when you get a chance - there are websites, including one from the Salvation Army, which will provide you with a range of values for various common items - remember the value is not what you paid for it, but what the item would sell for in a thrift type store.
In certain cases if an item one is donating is expensive there are special rules for deducting the donation, including the need for appraisal. So, as I say, make sure you check with whoever prepares your taxes as to what information and documentation you need.
If you volunteer your time for a listed organization you can deduct your expenses in doing so. You cannot deduct the cost of your time, but if you need to spend money in volunteering the money spent may be deductible. My husband and I are reenactors. Our unit is an educational not for profit, tax exempt organization. We have to provide our own period clothing - the cost of same is deductible. If I am going to demonstrate something to the public and I need equipment or supplies to do so and I pay for them - the cost is deductible. You can deduct the cost of traveling to and from where you volunteer - again there are IRS special set mileage rates for volunteering so keep records of when you volunteer and where so you can take the mileage and get and keep receipts if you use public transportation.
Well, this is running long. I guess there will be a part 3 continuing with some of the other deductions you can take and should save records for.
Paperwork for deductions is harder to collect and organize than that for income because while most of the income papers come to you at the end of the year, the paperwork for deductions is ongoing through out the year. Remember the envelope I suggested you set up? Proof of your deductions should also go into the envelope - if you start the envelope for the year in January you can add in the papers as you go through the year. Even if you were not able to itemize your expenses last year drop the related paperwork in the envelope - you never know.
Again, nothing in this blog is intended to be income tax advice and you should always consult your tax advisor/preparer for what deductions you can take and what documentation you need.
The first type of deduction is medical. This includes medical insurance, doctors, dentists, laboratory fees, prescriptions (generally not over the counter medications), hospitals & other procedures, eyeglasses, hearing aids, dentures, braces (tooth and otherwise) etc. You may have canceled checks, credit card slips, receipts for payments, statements from your medical insurance, etc. Drop them into the envelope as you get them. Get a color ink pen and whenever you pay anything which can be taken as a deduction on your taxes put a mark in your checkbook and/or next to the listing on your bank statement so you can easily find the amounts you spent which are tax deductible at the end of the year. Keep track of your mileage for medical trips or keep receipts from public transportation as you can deduct the cost of the trips. There is a mileage rate set every year by IRS, lower than that for business, specifically for medical trips, so if you know how many miles you traveled during the year for same, you can deduct for same. Medical expenses for “you” includes those for your spouse and anyone from your household you who you claim as a dependant (list) on your tax return.
The next type of deduction is taxes. If you pay state/local income taxes, real estate taxes, depending on your state - personal property taxes, car personal property taxes (different from car registration) and other similar taxes they are deductible. If you buy a large item during the year (such as a car) you want a record of the sales tax you paid on it. Again, copies of checks (or marked items on statements and/or in checkbook), paid bills, etc. should be kept. If your locality allows you to request a paid bill - get it (I know that all I have to do to get same is to check a box on the slip I send with the real estate tax payment).
Next is mortgage interest. There are limits and requirements, but most interest on your home (and a second home) mortgage is deductible. You should receive a form 1098 at the beginning of the next year (around when you get your W2 and 1099s) showing the amount of interest you paid during the year. It may also show the real estate taxes and/or home owners’ insurance your mortgage company/bank paid for you. If you have more than one mortgage you should receive a 1098 from each of them (whether you have multiple mortgages on the same house or you sold your house during the year and had mortgages on the new and old house or there is one on each of several houses you own.) The insurance is not deductible, but the form can be used to show proof of the amount of real estate taxes you paid. If you live in a coop you may receive one of these from your coop showing your share of what the coop paid, as well as a second one from your personal loan on your coop. Guess what? Drop the 1098(s) in your envelope.
Charitable contributions? The government wants us to be generous to what we call charities (they call them not for profit, tax exempt organizations). This includes a large variety of organizations from large (such as the American Cancer Society) to medium size, local (your church or other house of worship) to small (a foundation set up for the family of a firefighter who died for example). One thing that they all have in common is that they have registered with IRS and have been declared to be a not for profit, tax exempt organization. IRS has a list online - https://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Exempt-Organizations-Select-Check
If an organization is not on this list you can not deduct contributions to it. This includes the dollar you give the homeless man or woman on the corner. (It is generous of you to do so and I am not telling you not to, but you cannot deduct it.) Again, you need proof of the amount you donated - our old friends the record of the check to them or a credit card record of money donated, etc. These again go into the envelope. Some organizations, such as churches or synagogues or mosques will send you at the end of the year what you have donated during the year - if you are donating cash to your church there is usually an envelope you can put it in with your name or other information so that at the end of the year they can send you a letter with how much you have donated during the year including the cash. (What you pay for items you purchase at the bazaar, rummage sale, etc. during the year are not deductible.)
You can donate other than cash. If you donate items to an organization (you know the stuff you are getting rid of while decluttering and organizing your home) - Goodwill, Salvation Army, and St. Vincent dePaul being the more common ones I know - they should provide you with a receipt for your donations. When I do this I make a list of what I am bringing and how many bags, etc. they are in. They will then give a receipt saying, for example, 3 bags, and I will attach my list to the receipt and drop in the envelope (well in my case it is a file, but for you - your envelope). The organizations are not allowed to provide a value to you for the items donated. When you are doing your taxes or when you get a chance - there are websites, including one from the Salvation Army, which will provide you with a range of values for various common items - remember the value is not what you paid for it, but what the item would sell for in a thrift type store.
In certain cases if an item one is donating is expensive there are special rules for deducting the donation, including the need for appraisal. So, as I say, make sure you check with whoever prepares your taxes as to what information and documentation you need.
If you volunteer your time for a listed organization you can deduct your expenses in doing so. You cannot deduct the cost of your time, but if you need to spend money in volunteering the money spent may be deductible. My husband and I are reenactors. Our unit is an educational not for profit, tax exempt organization. We have to provide our own period clothing - the cost of same is deductible. If I am going to demonstrate something to the public and I need equipment or supplies to do so and I pay for them - the cost is deductible. You can deduct the cost of traveling to and from where you volunteer - again there are IRS special set mileage rates for volunteering so keep records of when you volunteer and where so you can take the mileage and get and keep receipts if you use public transportation.
Well, this is running long. I guess there will be a part 3 continuing with some of the other deductions you can take and should save records for.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
CHRISTMAS MOSTLY STORED AWAY
We put up our Christmas decorations in the house late, so we never rush to take them down. It used to sit around and around and finally I would deal with it - sometimes in March (one year in April, but that was because our garage door froze to the ground and we could not get into it until there was a thaw to get out the boxes to pack in - since then the boxes stay in the house after being unpacked). So after years of it being too soon (to us) to take down decorations and then it was much past when they should have been taken down, we set a date. Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered on the 3rd Monday in January - we chose same as when to start taking down the Christmas decorations - the date has no significance to doing so, but it is a fixed time around when we want to do so and the holiday publicity reminds us.
So, that Monday was the day to start. This is for the inside decorations. The outside ones come down based on the weather - it needs to be warm enough to take them down and we are not going to climb through snow to do so. The day before was a COLD day, but snow is expected for the coming weekend, possibly a lot, so we took down the outside lights and put them in the garage (which is also husband’s woodworking shop). We did not wrap them up and pack them as I could not feel 3 of my fingers and needed to warm up. We packed them the next day as it was warmer.
I brought up one of the storage boxes for the inside ornaments - specifically one for ornaments from our main Christmas tree - a few days before. I had planned to bring up the others right away, but I realized that there wasn’t room to bring them up as husband’s loom and related items are spread across the living room and the coffee table moved to accommodate his loom work. I put the box under the coffee table - any place else and we would not be able to walk in the room - until the day after I was suppose to start.
I took out the box, pushed aside the loom items on the sofa (any of this sound like your life?) and opened the box. I started taking ornaments off the tree - not a lot, but a start. The ornaments went right into their storage boxes that were in the box, while I also pulled ones which I have embroidered, off the tree and set them on a chair (which has been decorated for the season an embroidered Christmas throw pillow I made some years ago) to pack later. It is the starting which is hard for me and now it is started.
We used to pack our ornaments in cartons which we had accumulated over the years which originally held reams of paper for the computer, printer, etc. After having bed bugs we wanted them packed in something which sealed better, as well as the fact that corrugated cardboard is something that bed bugs like, so we bought large plastic boxes which lock closed on the ends. We have been storing most of the ornaments in the rafters of our garage. These new boxes had to go through the rafters one end up and then turn. In addition my husband does not like climbing up to get them down - he has to clear off a work table (yes, he is like me and there is disorganization in his workshop) and stand on it and lean over to move the boxes around. The boxes were not all that light, even after I rearranged the contents so lighter and heavier items were more mixed together than before. The need to rearrange the contents was annoying to me as I had the boxes originally packed so that the nicest ornaments came out of one box and I worked my way down to the fill in ornaments in the last of the tree ornament boxes, the general “in the house” decorations were in their own 2 boxes, etc. Now they were all mixed together to distribute the weight. Not at all convenient for unpacking and repacking.
The last 2 winters we had so much snow - continuously (last winter we went through a month or more of major snowstorms every 2-3 days) - that the decorations were packed into their boxes, but by the time we could move the boxes to the (detached) garage for storage it was almost summer and we left them stacked where the main tree had been - which left all of the furniture which gets moved around to fit in the Christmas trees and such also not put where they belonged.
I have come up with a solution. I found a spot where the boxes will fit in our basement. We have a small “closet” with our gas meter in it and there is space between the side of same and the shelves holding bolts of fabric where it looked like the boxes would fit. I cleared out the area - what looks like used plastic drop clothes, and empty bolt cardboard centers (kept in case we ever needed to wrap large cuts of fabric onto them - like we ever would) with the plastic that had been over the original fabric also kept - were all thrown out - the cardboard put in for recycling. I moved the remaining items out of the area. I found not only do the boxes fit the space, but the widest dimension of the boxes fit so they will fit in more compactly then I thought - good if I they do not all fit in one stack (we have low ceilings even in the main part of the house). I also found out that I had more of certain preprinted panel baby quilt fabric - I used to make and sell panel baby quilts) that I thought I had no more of. I am not interested in making a quilt, but I had finished two embroidered teddy bear pieces from a kit and wanted to make 2 other pieces to go with them and had envisioned embroidering the decision two of the bears from the quilt panel - one each - on matching squares to make a 4 square hanging piece, so by cleaning up a bit I now have the teddy bears to copy, which thought I no longer had - a bit of a reward for the cleaning.
Now I am able to store the boxes in the basement. Weather will not affect being able to store them. I will not need husband to be able to access them and he will not need to go climbing up. Weight does not matter as much anymore and I will be able to repack everything as it used to be.
The outside Christmas lights were also stored in the garage and needed, even more dangerously, for him to climb on a ladder and then hand the box down to me while balancing on the ladder. They can now go where the other ornaments used to be, still a climb, but safer. I suggested we split them into 2 smaller boxes to deal with the rafters problem and make them ligher - maybe even switching with 2 smaller boxes I had some decorations in and I would take the large box for the decorations in exchange for the smaller ones. He will also have more room to store wood in his shop. I cleaned the large box from the lights well and this idea worked - 2 smaller, lighter boxes of outdoor Christmas lights - stored in the rafters of the garage - and a nice large box for wool.
Better all around such a simple idea.
Have you taken down your Christmas decorations and tree? Has everything been put away yet?
I have since taken down and stored the rest of the ornaments from the main and studio tree as well as stored the Christmas decorations from the main floor of the house. After finishing this I found a Christmas doll who had evaded me. She will be put into the “soft” decorations box shortly. I also took down and stored the dining room tree and it’s ornaments. It’s ornaments are all collectible brass ones from Colonial Williamsburg so they are being stored upstairs as they were before as I don’t want them in the damp basement.
Why publish this now? Well, missing from the above is putting away my (our?) little village of teddy bear figurines. We both love it so that it is always hard to put it away. This past week I spent 2 days packing up the little bears, their tree and some buildings (every teddy bear town needs a honey store, a church, a first aid office and a fruit store - right?).
I have been asked what a teddy bear village is. I had a large number of teddy bear ornaments and they were taking over our main Christmas tree. So we bought a table top tree and moved some of them to that tree and put it at the top of the stairs so it could also be seen from the main floor of the house. I then added some little bears I had - some on little ladders decorating the tree - and it just kept going. It is amazing how many (cheap) small bear figurines with a Christmas theme there are. Not all of them are specifically Christmas - there is a small band of bears playing at the church while others are singing. There are bears at a phone booth making a call (an inch tall). There is a polar bear helping himself to a certain cola which uses him for ads. There is a “craft” fair of bears with small craft like items. There is a gazebo in the park (as of 2014 it even has lights). There is a parade and bears watching the parade - well I guess you get the idea. Many, if not most people would think we are crazy, but we think it is cute.
Well, that means 95% of my Christmas stuff is stored. The only items left (other than the doll who hid) are some other bears that are displayed in the living room and could not be stored until the village was as they store in the box the village is on the top of.
Well, luckily I do a lot less for Easter. Unless we start doing an Easter teddy village - we are kicking around the idea of making it seasonal...
So, that Monday was the day to start. This is for the inside decorations. The outside ones come down based on the weather - it needs to be warm enough to take them down and we are not going to climb through snow to do so. The day before was a COLD day, but snow is expected for the coming weekend, possibly a lot, so we took down the outside lights and put them in the garage (which is also husband’s woodworking shop). We did not wrap them up and pack them as I could not feel 3 of my fingers and needed to warm up. We packed them the next day as it was warmer.
I brought up one of the storage boxes for the inside ornaments - specifically one for ornaments from our main Christmas tree - a few days before. I had planned to bring up the others right away, but I realized that there wasn’t room to bring them up as husband’s loom and related items are spread across the living room and the coffee table moved to accommodate his loom work. I put the box under the coffee table - any place else and we would not be able to walk in the room - until the day after I was suppose to start.
I took out the box, pushed aside the loom items on the sofa (any of this sound like your life?) and opened the box. I started taking ornaments off the tree - not a lot, but a start. The ornaments went right into their storage boxes that were in the box, while I also pulled ones which I have embroidered, off the tree and set them on a chair (which has been decorated for the season an embroidered Christmas throw pillow I made some years ago) to pack later. It is the starting which is hard for me and now it is started.
We used to pack our ornaments in cartons which we had accumulated over the years which originally held reams of paper for the computer, printer, etc. After having bed bugs we wanted them packed in something which sealed better, as well as the fact that corrugated cardboard is something that bed bugs like, so we bought large plastic boxes which lock closed on the ends. We have been storing most of the ornaments in the rafters of our garage. These new boxes had to go through the rafters one end up and then turn. In addition my husband does not like climbing up to get them down - he has to clear off a work table (yes, he is like me and there is disorganization in his workshop) and stand on it and lean over to move the boxes around. The boxes were not all that light, even after I rearranged the contents so lighter and heavier items were more mixed together than before. The need to rearrange the contents was annoying to me as I had the boxes originally packed so that the nicest ornaments came out of one box and I worked my way down to the fill in ornaments in the last of the tree ornament boxes, the general “in the house” decorations were in their own 2 boxes, etc. Now they were all mixed together to distribute the weight. Not at all convenient for unpacking and repacking.
The last 2 winters we had so much snow - continuously (last winter we went through a month or more of major snowstorms every 2-3 days) - that the decorations were packed into their boxes, but by the time we could move the boxes to the (detached) garage for storage it was almost summer and we left them stacked where the main tree had been - which left all of the furniture which gets moved around to fit in the Christmas trees and such also not put where they belonged.
I have come up with a solution. I found a spot where the boxes will fit in our basement. We have a small “closet” with our gas meter in it and there is space between the side of same and the shelves holding bolts of fabric where it looked like the boxes would fit. I cleared out the area - what looks like used plastic drop clothes, and empty bolt cardboard centers (kept in case we ever needed to wrap large cuts of fabric onto them - like we ever would) with the plastic that had been over the original fabric also kept - were all thrown out - the cardboard put in for recycling. I moved the remaining items out of the area. I found not only do the boxes fit the space, but the widest dimension of the boxes fit so they will fit in more compactly then I thought - good if I they do not all fit in one stack (we have low ceilings even in the main part of the house). I also found out that I had more of certain preprinted panel baby quilt fabric - I used to make and sell panel baby quilts) that I thought I had no more of. I am not interested in making a quilt, but I had finished two embroidered teddy bear pieces from a kit and wanted to make 2 other pieces to go with them and had envisioned embroidering the decision two of the bears from the quilt panel - one each - on matching squares to make a 4 square hanging piece, so by cleaning up a bit I now have the teddy bears to copy, which thought I no longer had - a bit of a reward for the cleaning.
Now I am able to store the boxes in the basement. Weather will not affect being able to store them. I will not need husband to be able to access them and he will not need to go climbing up. Weight does not matter as much anymore and I will be able to repack everything as it used to be.
The outside Christmas lights were also stored in the garage and needed, even more dangerously, for him to climb on a ladder and then hand the box down to me while balancing on the ladder. They can now go where the other ornaments used to be, still a climb, but safer. I suggested we split them into 2 smaller boxes to deal with the rafters problem and make them ligher - maybe even switching with 2 smaller boxes I had some decorations in and I would take the large box for the decorations in exchange for the smaller ones. He will also have more room to store wood in his shop. I cleaned the large box from the lights well and this idea worked - 2 smaller, lighter boxes of outdoor Christmas lights - stored in the rafters of the garage - and a nice large box for wool.
Better all around such a simple idea.
Have you taken down your Christmas decorations and tree? Has everything been put away yet?
I have since taken down and stored the rest of the ornaments from the main and studio tree as well as stored the Christmas decorations from the main floor of the house. After finishing this I found a Christmas doll who had evaded me. She will be put into the “soft” decorations box shortly. I also took down and stored the dining room tree and it’s ornaments. It’s ornaments are all collectible brass ones from Colonial Williamsburg so they are being stored upstairs as they were before as I don’t want them in the damp basement.
Why publish this now? Well, missing from the above is putting away my (our?) little village of teddy bear figurines. We both love it so that it is always hard to put it away. This past week I spent 2 days packing up the little bears, their tree and some buildings (every teddy bear town needs a honey store, a church, a first aid office and a fruit store - right?).
I have been asked what a teddy bear village is. I had a large number of teddy bear ornaments and they were taking over our main Christmas tree. So we bought a table top tree and moved some of them to that tree and put it at the top of the stairs so it could also be seen from the main floor of the house. I then added some little bears I had - some on little ladders decorating the tree - and it just kept going. It is amazing how many (cheap) small bear figurines with a Christmas theme there are. Not all of them are specifically Christmas - there is a small band of bears playing at the church while others are singing. There are bears at a phone booth making a call (an inch tall). There is a polar bear helping himself to a certain cola which uses him for ads. There is a “craft” fair of bears with small craft like items. There is a gazebo in the park (as of 2014 it even has lights). There is a parade and bears watching the parade - well I guess you get the idea. Many, if not most people would think we are crazy, but we think it is cute.
Well, that means 95% of my Christmas stuff is stored. The only items left (other than the doll who hid) are some other bears that are displayed in the living room and could not be stored until the village was as they store in the box the village is on the top of.
Well, luckily I do a lot less for Easter. Unless we start doing an Easter teddy village - we are kicking around the idea of making it seasonal...
Thursday, February 4, 2016
A PROJECT THAT TOOK DAYS INSTEAD OF AN HOUR DUE TO DISORGANIZATION
My husband got a loom for Christmas. It is not a huge one, but it is 32 inches wide. It is something he has wanted for decades. He was willing to give up a trip he loves in early December to cover the cost. He has had small hand looms in the past, but never one big enough to make more than a potholder or thin strap on.
He was very anxious to get it set up and use it, which we can all understand. We set it up a couple of days after Christmas. He will be using it in the living room or dining room due to logistics in the house. It was set up in the living room as due to a piece of furniture - a DVD chest he made - being displaced to the dining room from the living room so the Christmas tree would fit in the living room, so there was no room in the dining room. Due to the Christmas tree, there was not really enough room in the living room either for the loom, but there was more room than in the dining room.
The easy way to set up what is called the warp (the threads that one weaves the other threads - the weft - through) for this type of loom is to set up a short wooden dowel in a device which clamps onto a table or other flat surface. This is done so that the distance between a certain part of the loom and the dowel is the amount of warp needed to work with, plus extra for needed waste. Husband moved a coffee table out of the way (too low to use) and brought up a tray table. He set up the dowel clamp on the tray table and we went to work warping (putting the warp on) the loom. I had to help him for this part as it is easier with two people. It went surprisingly well and he was subsequently able to make a nice 2 foot long piece for a table or a bureau.
What does this have to do with organizing? I am getting to that - already there was a problem with space due to displaced furniture and Christmas tree. I would have waited until it was all cleared up a bit, but I understand him wanting to go forward right away after decades of anticipation.
After the success of the first piece he waited until the Christmas tree was down (he did encourage me a bit more than usual to get it done) and stored away before attempting a second larger piece. We started warping the loom last Sunday using the same tray table. We were not so lucky this time, perhaps because this piece was to be wider and longer and therefore pulled more on the dowel, the tray table fell over, the dowel assembly fell apart and all of the loops knotted together on the floor. We tried for some time to sort them, than gave up and cut them off the loom.
In finishing up setting the downstairs of the house back from Christmas, I then put, among other items, the DVD chest back where it belonged. He had the idea to open the front of the chest and attach the dowel to the top of it - it is a very heavy chest and could not fall over. We got about 75% of the way through the warping process and the dowel assembly fell apart and ended up back on the floor.
We were able this time to sort some of the loops apart, reattached the dowel to the DVD chest and started again. Same problem. Husband was frantic and ready to sell the loom. We managed to get the loops untangled from each other by sheer stubbornness on my part and ordered take in for dinner as it was now too late to cook.
Husband had a new idea. He brought up a foldable worktable from the basement with a long dowel which he put the through the opening of the worktable and clamped the table closed around it. We started again. Now, thinking ahead, we stopped each time we had a group of loops around the dowel and tied the loops together. This way if we had a problem, we would not lose all of the work we had down to knotting together of the loops. (All of the loops are to be knotted together anyway when they are finished.) We finally got all of the warp threads on to the loom.
After we gave up on using the tray table husband took it to use to hold the items he needed to do the warping on his end. They were loose on the table and were over and under each other. He also could not reach the table from where he was. I moved the table closer and sorted the items out a bit.
So, what have we learned about organizing from all this -
1 - Don’t rush doing things until the space you need is ready. (Much easier not to climb around Christmas decorations.
2 - Have the right equipment - until we had the right setup for the dowel we had a problem.
3 - Keep the tools you need where they can be reached and organized - the table close at hand and the items sorted for ease of access made the job much easier.
4 - If it is possible, protect the work in small groups (tying groups of thread loops together as we went in the final attempt) to prevent bigger problems.
5 - Don’t give up - persevere.
Oh, there was one other problem which arose from losing the warp so much. Yarn is sold is what is called “dye lots”. Two units of the same type of yarn in the same color might be slightly off from each other as each time a “lot”of yarn is dyed it comes out slightly different from all other “lots” of that yarn in that color. It is just that each time dyeing is done it is slightly different. So yarn companies give each “lot” a number (or letter and number combination). When we started he had enough yarn to make both the warp and the weft of the piece from the same cone of yarn. We lost yarn when we had to cut it off the loom. He no longer did. Luckily I was able to find some more of the yarn with the same dye lot marking today. So, plan ahead for the unexpected. If I had not found the matching cone of yarn today, he would have had to use a different yarn from a different “lot” for the weft (the weft is the bulk of the yarn needed). This would not have been a problem as it would have been all of the weft done with the other “lot”, but that would have left him with 2 unusable amounts of the yarn from the 2 cones. Now it matches and can be added to the started cone.
Do you have a problem with starting projects without preparing properly or without having sufficient room to work properly?
As a side followup note - today I brought the drinking glasses which I had taken out of the kitchen cabinet and I donated them to Goodwill. A job started and finished.
He was very anxious to get it set up and use it, which we can all understand. We set it up a couple of days after Christmas. He will be using it in the living room or dining room due to logistics in the house. It was set up in the living room as due to a piece of furniture - a DVD chest he made - being displaced to the dining room from the living room so the Christmas tree would fit in the living room, so there was no room in the dining room. Due to the Christmas tree, there was not really enough room in the living room either for the loom, but there was more room than in the dining room.
The easy way to set up what is called the warp (the threads that one weaves the other threads - the weft - through) for this type of loom is to set up a short wooden dowel in a device which clamps onto a table or other flat surface. This is done so that the distance between a certain part of the loom and the dowel is the amount of warp needed to work with, plus extra for needed waste. Husband moved a coffee table out of the way (too low to use) and brought up a tray table. He set up the dowel clamp on the tray table and we went to work warping (putting the warp on) the loom. I had to help him for this part as it is easier with two people. It went surprisingly well and he was subsequently able to make a nice 2 foot long piece for a table or a bureau.
What does this have to do with organizing? I am getting to that - already there was a problem with space due to displaced furniture and Christmas tree. I would have waited until it was all cleared up a bit, but I understand him wanting to go forward right away after decades of anticipation.
After the success of the first piece he waited until the Christmas tree was down (he did encourage me a bit more than usual to get it done) and stored away before attempting a second larger piece. We started warping the loom last Sunday using the same tray table. We were not so lucky this time, perhaps because this piece was to be wider and longer and therefore pulled more on the dowel, the tray table fell over, the dowel assembly fell apart and all of the loops knotted together on the floor. We tried for some time to sort them, than gave up and cut them off the loom.
In finishing up setting the downstairs of the house back from Christmas, I then put, among other items, the DVD chest back where it belonged. He had the idea to open the front of the chest and attach the dowel to the top of it - it is a very heavy chest and could not fall over. We got about 75% of the way through the warping process and the dowel assembly fell apart and ended up back on the floor.
We were able this time to sort some of the loops apart, reattached the dowel to the DVD chest and started again. Same problem. Husband was frantic and ready to sell the loom. We managed to get the loops untangled from each other by sheer stubbornness on my part and ordered take in for dinner as it was now too late to cook.
Husband had a new idea. He brought up a foldable worktable from the basement with a long dowel which he put the through the opening of the worktable and clamped the table closed around it. We started again. Now, thinking ahead, we stopped each time we had a group of loops around the dowel and tied the loops together. This way if we had a problem, we would not lose all of the work we had down to knotting together of the loops. (All of the loops are to be knotted together anyway when they are finished.) We finally got all of the warp threads on to the loom.
After we gave up on using the tray table husband took it to use to hold the items he needed to do the warping on his end. They were loose on the table and were over and under each other. He also could not reach the table from where he was. I moved the table closer and sorted the items out a bit.
So, what have we learned about organizing from all this -
1 - Don’t rush doing things until the space you need is ready. (Much easier not to climb around Christmas decorations.
2 - Have the right equipment - until we had the right setup for the dowel we had a problem.
3 - Keep the tools you need where they can be reached and organized - the table close at hand and the items sorted for ease of access made the job much easier.
4 - If it is possible, protect the work in small groups (tying groups of thread loops together as we went in the final attempt) to prevent bigger problems.
5 - Don’t give up - persevere.
Oh, there was one other problem which arose from losing the warp so much. Yarn is sold is what is called “dye lots”. Two units of the same type of yarn in the same color might be slightly off from each other as each time a “lot”of yarn is dyed it comes out slightly different from all other “lots” of that yarn in that color. It is just that each time dyeing is done it is slightly different. So yarn companies give each “lot” a number (or letter and number combination). When we started he had enough yarn to make both the warp and the weft of the piece from the same cone of yarn. We lost yarn when we had to cut it off the loom. He no longer did. Luckily I was able to find some more of the yarn with the same dye lot marking today. So, plan ahead for the unexpected. If I had not found the matching cone of yarn today, he would have had to use a different yarn from a different “lot” for the weft (the weft is the bulk of the yarn needed). This would not have been a problem as it would have been all of the weft done with the other “lot”, but that would have left him with 2 unusable amounts of the yarn from the 2 cones. Now it matches and can be added to the started cone.
Do you have a problem with starting projects without preparing properly or without having sufficient room to work properly?
As a side followup note - today I brought the drinking glasses which I had taken out of the kitchen cabinet and I donated them to Goodwill. A job started and finished.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
LET'S START WITH MY LITTLE KITCHEN
The kitchen - everyone’s kitchen and it’s uses are different. When reading books I am told that I must make work areas. I have no room for work areas do you?
Our kitchen is allegedly an eat in kitchen. We have a small table that fits the 2 of us, possibly a guest if we sit very close. Our kitchen is what is called a galley kitchen. This means that the work area of the kitchen consists of 2 sides of an aisle, similar to what might exist in a boat, hence the term.
I have a sink in the middle of the counter on one side of the aisle, with the only window in the kitchen above the sink. There is a non-working dishwasher under a counter top on one side of the sink and a counter top on the other side. Total length of the this counter is maybe 5 ft. There is the usual cabinet under the sink, 2 small and one “bread” drawer and small cabinet under the end of the counter without the dishwasher. Above the counter there is a wall cabinet on each end with 4 shelves in it which goes to the ceiling. Across the aisle from this is a range (freestanding stove and oven) with a wall cabinet over it, a free standing floor cabinet with a drawer, a thin wall cabinet over it and the refrigerator.
I also have a small pantry closet with shelves which supplements the above for kitchen storage. It is located beyond the kitchen table, across the bathroom. Yes, I have a bathroom which is basically in part of my kitchen. When we sit at the table we are looking at the outside wall of the bathroom and the entrance faces the pantry closet. I have to turn on the light in my bathroom to see what is in my pantry closet!
The kitchen also serves as our main entry to the house. We have what used to be a den that we use as a studio, attached to the back of the house, behind the kitchen, so we walk through the kitchen to reach it. The kitchen also connects through the dining room - opposite the entry to our studio - to the rest of the house. I have never heard of a kitchen like this in any organizing book I have read.
I do suggest, as others do, going through your kitchen stuff and getting rid of items which you don’t use. I have no hard and fast rule about time - no one year limit. I am about to get rid of, for example, a set that is suppose to keep your eggs round when fried (in rings) and your bacon flat (a weight). I have never used them. We don’t eat breakfast. I don’t cook bacon. When cook eggs we do so for dinner and I make omelets. We had received decades ago a “fold in half, nonstick” omelet pan as gift. It sat around unused and was long ago donated to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. The egg set will soon be following it. On the other hand, I have a very large stockpot and lid which I used to use to make soup for Thanksgiving dinner and other meals I made for the extended family. We no longer have the family (or anyone) for dinner in the house (the story behind this will be written much later in time). Organizing books would say I should get rid of this pot. I hope to one day have dinners here in the house again and I would never be able to replace this pot with one I would be happy with, so I keep it. It is stored, though, not in my kitchen but in a very small closet in my basement. So my rule is that if I reasonably might use the item again, I keep it. If it gives me hope, I keep it. If I have never used it, it goes.
What do items do I have in my kitchen for use? Tune in next week. I have turned on the feature which lets you follow me - feel free to use it.
Our kitchen is allegedly an eat in kitchen. We have a small table that fits the 2 of us, possibly a guest if we sit very close. Our kitchen is what is called a galley kitchen. This means that the work area of the kitchen consists of 2 sides of an aisle, similar to what might exist in a boat, hence the term.
I have a sink in the middle of the counter on one side of the aisle, with the only window in the kitchen above the sink. There is a non-working dishwasher under a counter top on one side of the sink and a counter top on the other side. Total length of the this counter is maybe 5 ft. There is the usual cabinet under the sink, 2 small and one “bread” drawer and small cabinet under the end of the counter without the dishwasher. Above the counter there is a wall cabinet on each end with 4 shelves in it which goes to the ceiling. Across the aisle from this is a range (freestanding stove and oven) with a wall cabinet over it, a free standing floor cabinet with a drawer, a thin wall cabinet over it and the refrigerator.
I also have a small pantry closet with shelves which supplements the above for kitchen storage. It is located beyond the kitchen table, across the bathroom. Yes, I have a bathroom which is basically in part of my kitchen. When we sit at the table we are looking at the outside wall of the bathroom and the entrance faces the pantry closet. I have to turn on the light in my bathroom to see what is in my pantry closet!
The kitchen also serves as our main entry to the house. We have what used to be a den that we use as a studio, attached to the back of the house, behind the kitchen, so we walk through the kitchen to reach it. The kitchen also connects through the dining room - opposite the entry to our studio - to the rest of the house. I have never heard of a kitchen like this in any organizing book I have read.
I do suggest, as others do, going through your kitchen stuff and getting rid of items which you don’t use. I have no hard and fast rule about time - no one year limit. I am about to get rid of, for example, a set that is suppose to keep your eggs round when fried (in rings) and your bacon flat (a weight). I have never used them. We don’t eat breakfast. I don’t cook bacon. When cook eggs we do so for dinner and I make omelets. We had received decades ago a “fold in half, nonstick” omelet pan as gift. It sat around unused and was long ago donated to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. The egg set will soon be following it. On the other hand, I have a very large stockpot and lid which I used to use to make soup for Thanksgiving dinner and other meals I made for the extended family. We no longer have the family (or anyone) for dinner in the house (the story behind this will be written much later in time). Organizing books would say I should get rid of this pot. I hope to one day have dinners here in the house again and I would never be able to replace this pot with one I would be happy with, so I keep it. It is stored, though, not in my kitchen but in a very small closet in my basement. So my rule is that if I reasonably might use the item again, I keep it. If it gives me hope, I keep it. If I have never used it, it goes.
What do items do I have in my kitchen for use? Tune in next week. I have turned on the feature which lets you follow me - feel free to use it.
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