And this is why my blogging name is Digital Packrat.
There just has to be a Fujitsu Scansnap in my future, but for now I use a flatbed (I really got it for photos and slides.)
Obviously some of what I scan is the usual dull stuff that I have to keep whether I like it or not - bank statements, tax records, that sort of thing, but some stuff I scan because I think I’ll want to be able to look at it later - magazine articles, sections from my alumnae publication - and then I realize the material can’t even hold my interest while I am scanning it - so what makes me think I’ll ever want to look at it later? But I scan this stuff anyway, because, in my mind, that’s what I have to do to let go of the hardcopy. I’m trying to figure out how to skip this step.
There might be, but it is likely a good deal more expensive. I know there are services that basically send the pictures to India (the process is very labor intensive), but of course the pictures could get lost. You can scan pictures in the Scansnap, but they lose clarity.
Recently moved, and my new place is significantly more organized/neater/cleaner than the last one. It’s also more space for me, though, now that I don’t have roommates.
The thing for me to tackle is the box or two of papers, and box or two of things brought back from travels that haven’t been sorted/organized/thrown away. Small boxes, and only a few, but still I’m not looking forward to it.
The plumber came today to repair a loose faucet, so I had to empty the cabinet under the kitchen sink. While everything was out, I sorted and organized - tossed out a few empty coffee cans, consolidated like items in single containers, put all the cleaners into one plastic bin. It’s such a minor thing, but it’s so nice now: the cabinet doesn’t get all Fibber McGee on me and toss everything out when I just need a trash bag! I was so inspired that I also cleaned and reorganized the pantry and the spice cabinet. Now, I know what’s there and exactly** where it is, instead of rummage, rummage, cuss, “I know there’s another can of tomato sauce somewhere,”. It’s a nice feeling!
What I did to scan Mom’s pics was take the pile of pages out of each album (they’re ring binders), place them on my far left, scanner, laptop. Switch the TV on to music videos. Open scanner. Place page on scanner. Close scanner. Scan. Open scanner. Flip page. Close scanner. Scan. Open scanner. Place scanned page on my right. Place new page on scanner. Close scanner. Scan…
Since I was NOT doing anything other than scan (not choosing pics, not cleaning up, just scan), it was sort of a sitting nap.
This would make me LIVID, and I don’t know why you put up with it. Why not give her a clear ultimatum?
“We really want the room ourselves, this was only a temporary arrangement, and you’ve moved now. Your choice: either we get the room cleared out and all stuff carried to Goodwill by the end of then next two weeks, or you come and get it before that.”
Here is a recent thread for inspiration: in which StarvingbutStrong wards off a clutter invasion much like the one you are facing now.
Secondly, the important thing is to keep the initiative. You don’t ask her to come and get the stuff within two months; she already has had that opportunity and she hasn’t done that.
No, *you *have to arrange something with goodwill or a mover to come and get it. So if your SIL does nothing, the problem will be solved anyway.
She’s a freaking mess, basically. Usually a nice gal but dealing with depression, on-and-off (under)employment issues, currently in the middle of a separation and probable divorce from her second husband that she’s too ashamed to talk about the reason for. (Trying to not make this too Google-able here…) The person who told us the probable reason isn’t always a reliable source, but claimed the trigger was a pretty violent, could-have-killed-her action that triggered this, and we did see him acting irrationally angry earlier that day. He’s possibly off his meds and has a mental illness that could potentially lead to this kind of behavior if he stopped his meds.
So yeah, we’ve been bugging her on and off in better weather, but we would get lots of “geez, of course you want your basement back, but you’re kicking her while she’s down” bad karma with the family if we pushed it right now. Frankly, we’ve been lazy about cleaning out the basement, so it’d be pretty douchey to demand “now now NOW!” at this moment.
Plus, in temps ranging from 90-100+F (about 32-38C) plus high humidity lately, I don’t want to clean out our basement now! It sucks! Hauling a couple boxes of books out there was bad enough. I need time to separate out our stuff from hers so there aren’t any mistakes or excuses.
So I just posted a “Whoa, I guess I need to get a dumpster for this basement, but the weather sucks so I’m gonna do this in the fall” post on Facebook and commiserated with a few friends about the whole process. Not just to get the wheels turning in her brain - I wanted to see if anyone in my area had better suggestions for trash removal options. Then in a month, it’s going to be the direct message to her, explaining my plan for the following month.
I just hope it’ll be better weather once fall comes. Yuck!
I doubt there’s anything worth salvaging among her stuff down there. It’s a not-particularly-finished basement, and time/bugs/moisture has taken a toll in spots, plus there is lots of stuff that’s literally trash (garbage bags, empty cardboard boxes, packing materials). I’m not going to pay movers; if she wants to set up movers to take some stuff away, I’ll accommodate it as best we can. My plan is for a dumpster.
Anyway, the basement is the end of a long process of evicting her stuff. The basement is out of the way so it was easy to ignore, plus it was only last month (IIRC) where we discovered the storeroom in back not only had stuff put in it, but actual garbage (dry, thankfully) bags in it. I was willing to ignore random crap for a while but that was it for me.
Ferret Herder, thanks for the explanation. Not that you owed me one,
Yours is a real-life story on how clutter plays a part in someone’s (your SIL) life. I wonder what would be better for her. Is it pleasant for her to know her stuff is still there? Or does she feel bothered by still having to do the sorting out? Maybe she feels guilty for imposing on you and not having her own things in order? maybe she misses some stuff, like papers she needs for her divorce and that cost her money because she doesn’t have the info /proof at hand?
Maybe it would be therapeutic for her if you went throught her stuff together and had a good talk while doing so? I don’t know.
You’re obviously just being nice to her, I just don’t know what would be the nicest thing to do and how much tough love is in order.
Frankly, we were thinking about cleaning it out after this summer anyway, but the divorce thing derailed us having a “tough love” talk with her like we’d considered.
I wouldn’t worry about paperwork - her marriage happened after she got evicted! :eek:
After reading how everyone is cleaning up and getting rid of things, I decided that this morning was the perfect time to clean out the laundry room.
My laundry room is 7’x11’. It was HUGELY cluttered. My husband has most of his tools in there (some have taken residence in the back hallway, also). He’s in the process of building a large shed, and I’ll be thrilled when it’s done, so I can get all the tools OUT of the house. He’s on OTR truck driver, and it’s going to take him forever to get it finished. But, he’s hoping to have it done before the snow flies, and it can’t happen soon enough, in my opinion.
I bought a set of large shelves this past weekend. I my daughter and I started this morning, and cleaned out the laundry room. We put up the shelves, and put most things back, only it’s much neater, and very organized now. We ended up throwing away one leaf-sized garbage bag full of crap that we didn’t use, anymore. I can actually go in there and walk around. So much nicer.
Thank you all for giving me the gumption to do it, and keep up the great work!
I dunno. I have stored stuff at my house for both my best friends and it worked out. The key was that there was a fixed date of the stuff being removed (when they both moved into their respective new homes) and that getting the stuff there was under my control (I was loading it all up in my car and bringing it to them).
Add on that they great people who look out for others (especially me since they love me), I doubt it would ever be a problem.
Now, if my sister in law wanted to store anything? No way, Jose. I know exactly what would happen. I have seen what happens.
Frustrating “weekend” for me (I’m off Sunday-Tuesday) as the heat is really knocking the stuffing out of me, but I DID:
Keep up with the dishes
Weed the garden
Take the recyclables+1 down to the recycle place
Empty the household garbage
Neaten up the clothes closet a bit (it’s in the cool part of the house)
Get through a bit more of the paperwork piles
I’m thinking of doing another closet purge before I have to go back to work tomorrow. I can drop off a bag or two of no longer wanted clothing when I take my paycheck to the bank as Goodwill is right next door to them.
Our friends came over tonight, and the ‘‘scrambling around doing last minute cleaning’’ thing we’re so used to never happened. My house has been kept clean enough that I am comfortable with guests just waltzing in unannounced. What a cool feeling.
As of last summer I thought we were going to move to Kentucky in not too long a time. As of April, that’s not happening. In the meantime, though, I got a good start on getting rid of things and sorting out what to keep and what not to keep. I was making a point of getting rid of at least one thing (either throw out or put in the bag for the resale shop) every day, and it was getting easier to look at things and say, “I’m never going to use this.” When we decided to stay here, I decided to keep up the process, to get this house into better shape.
We’ve never been actually dirty, but clutter keeps things from getting properly dusted and vacuumed and suchlike. And not having things in order makes it that much harder to get a good start on anything, since everything I do means something else has to be moved or set aside or put away first. But it’s getting better. Sewing patterns are all in boxes, and a lot of them ended up in the resale bag. The random pictures that were piled in the corner by the desk are all in the file cabinet and a shoebox next to it. I’ve gone through craft magazines, pulled out pages I want, and stuffed the rest into the recycle bin. The pages I pulled are in sleeves in a binder, so I can find them.
Lots of paper got either shredded or binned, and everything is current and put away. No more piles of papers waiting to be filed.
Early in the summer I started in on the kitchen, scrubbing everything, right down to the microwave vent covers and windowsills between the windows and screens. In the process I got rid of a few things that weren’t being used, or that I didn’t like anymore. The direct impetus for that was that we were hosting my husband’s card game, which gave me a deadline. Now that it’s clean it’s easier to want to keep it that way.
At this point:
Dishes are being done every night, washed, air-dried, and put away. It’s surprising how happy a clean countertop makes me.
The mail doesn’t leave my hand until it’s either put away or thrown away. I need to set up a folder or something for things like bills that need to be paid or mail that needs attention later.
I’m trying to make a strong habit of not handling things twice. If I don’t set it down I don’t have to pick it up later.
I’ve gotten to thinking of the house in terms of ‘broken window syndrome’. When it’s messy it’s that much easier to add to the mess. When it’s clean it’s not only easier to see what’s out of place, but it makes me want to keep it that way more.
And when things are in place, and actually have places, it’s easier to find them and use them.
There are other contributing factors in my life in the past few years, but whatever the reason, it’s happening. By Christmas, this is going to be a whole different house.
I mucked out our kitchen pantry a few weeks back - a side effect of finding that a bag of whole-wheat flour came with its own supply of animal protein (pantry moths). Tossed anything grain-based that might have had a chance to get infested, got rid of outdated stuff, consolidated some things where we had multiples (who needs 3 partial containers of baking soda??). Got stackable bins for all the dry goods (and we have a LOT of those). There’s actually space in there now.
Eew, mothy protein. I am a strong believer in stackable bins. One of my best ideas was getting a set of small bins to organize the medicines in our linen closet. One for Cold and Flu, one for Pain Meds, and one for First Aid.
I am one of those people who gets very easily overwhelmed by cleaning. If I am surrounded with a mess I just sort of shut down when I realize everything I have to do.
Two things have really worked for me in addressing this issue.
Short cleaning sessions. You don’t have to clean the whole house. You don’t even have to clean the whole room. Can you set a timer for 15 minutes with full permission to walk away at the end if you want to? My spin on this was every time I left a room, I put away 5 things. So easy. The house was spotless by the end of the week.
You can’t make progress if you are continuing to make messes, so the basic idea is everything has a place and it goes there immediately when you’re done using it. I am only recently learning how to do this. My end table gets particularly cluttered so I actually have a specific list of items that are allowed to go on it - no more than one drinking glass at a time, nothing other than my electronics, a picture frame, and a box of tissue. I still use it to put stuff on, I just make sure that stuff is cleaned up every time I walk away.
I have discovered it really isn’t that hard to put away my jacket instead of throwing it on the couch, or put my shoes in their shoe holder, or put away a medicine bottle immediately after I use it. Everything is so much easier this way.
As for current projects, I’m still working on the spare room. I basically have the entire day to declutter and I’m going to make good use of it.
I mucked out our kitchen pantry a few weeks back - a side effect of finding that a bag of whole-wheat flour came with its own supply of animal protein (pantry moths). Tossed anything grain-based that might have had a chance to get infested, got rid of outdated stuff, consolidated some things where we had multiples (who needs 3 partial containers of baking soda??). Got stackable bins for all the dry goods (and we have a LOT of those). There’s actually space in there now.
I also tend to let mail pile up. I keep up with the basic household bills via online billpay and Quicken reminders, but non-routine stuff tends to get pushed aside “until I have time”. I finally piled everything I could find together - it completely filled a reusable grocery bag - and tore through it last night. 90% of it was trash (ads etc.), a few just have to be filed and put away, but there were a few bills as well. Oops.
Our biggest challenge areas:
master bedroom closet. There’s stuff in there that makes it hard to move around. I know there’s stuff that is outdated, outgrown etc. But who has time to clear it all out??
master bedroom itself: piles of stuff that need to be sorted / tossed / put away. Again, who has time.
Kids’ bedrooms are a disaster but they always are. We’ll go in once a year and do massive mucking out, and it looks good for a week.
Study/computer room. That is actually the most daunting: we have tons of papers that need to be sorted through, photos to scan and discard, etc. I could see it taking 2 of us several days to get it all handled.
What we’re doing right: We don’t let trash pile up. newspapers get tossed / recycled promptly, trash gets taken out, food isn’t left lying around, bathrooms are clean and functional, etc. With a couple hours work, we can get the public areas of the house looking pretty presentable. We’ve got a good scanner now so the plan is to scan virtually all paperwork that we need to keep - we can throw the paper away, or file it, as appropriate, but at least we’ll be able to get the information.
A while back, a friend whose husband is disabled (a kind of early-onset dementia) mentioned that he enjoys scanning photos, can spend hours at it, and offered his services as a scanner. This thread has finally inspired me to take them up on it. That’ll free up a ton of shelf space in the computer room.
My company bought a store-front. By they I mean they purchased a defunct shoe-repair business as-is. It had been unused for several years and when they first entered it everything was covered by 3-4 inches of dust and dirt. (ew)
Cleaning and organizing the mess while simultaneously running a business in the space has been and interesting challenge.
(With boss permission) I spent an entire afternoon working on some of the lingering mess. 2 garbage bags of trash later we have 8 now-empty drawers to store stuff in, I found a half a gross of a sewing machine needles so we don’t need to order them after all, various other supplies we’ve been needing that we no longer need to order, and several usable tools. More space, less trash, and we can spend our limited money for work supplies on something other than the items I found.
Also figured out why the blue singer treadle sewing machine isn’t working, but fixing that will have to wait until next week at the earliest.
