Two by two, hands of... purple
Apr. 7th, 2006 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI have been on a huge organization kick lately. It kind of started last summer when ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
feochadn and I were at University Village shopping center, and we went into the Crate & Barrel and she wanted to go upstairs and look at furniture and I said no, because I knew what sort of temptation awaited me and that it would likely result in a snap decision to buy some new furniture which I didn't need but would covet anyway.
And that's exactly what happened. I found this fantabulous couch that was so firm, it was like another work surface. No longer would I be afraid to bring the laptop out to the living room and work there, because I wouldn't sink into the couch, leaving my hip and shoulder in agony! And it was a cool armless sectional. Alas, my house is so minuscule that I couldn't get the sectional idea to work any which way. But I bought it anyway. Around the same time, Pottery Barn, those fiends, sent me my usual catalog, but contained within was really smart-looking furniture for media, a coffee table, etc with my name on it. No, really -- it was called the Rhys collection. And it had storage up the yin-yang. So, I bought that too. And some other stuff from LL Bean's mission furniture collection. And then I painted some of the kitchen and got new appliances to match the stainless steel fridge I had to buy Christmas before last when the old one died. And then I painted the bedroom. So I had to get new shelves for that, you know? In the back of my mind, I know part of why I am doing all this is that I felt like new stuff=new feelings, that it would make me feel better to get rid of everything old. It didn't, but... it's been something to do.
All this made me unhappy with my closets, which are puny and horrible. So, then I went out and got some closet organizey things and I discovered this whole world of neat organization stuff. Put a few things in the closets as is, though eventually, when the garage is finished and I recover financially (if ever), I want to have one of those closet companies come in if they will work on such a small job, and redo the whole thing. But I've had stuff thrown in my lone linen-type closet for a long time willy nilly, including old letters (ah, remember the days of letters?) and my completely disorganized photos that were thrown in shoeboxes. I got a nice big faux leather box for the correspondence and whittled that down to the important stuff to keep (dredging up a lot of old memories in the process, some painful ones, too), and then I got a couple of cute little photo storage boxes and went through all the old pics, throwing out the stuff where I couldn't even remember people or there were duplicates or the pics were so crappy you couldn't see anything. Managed to get everything down to two boxes, and now they all sit nestled nicely on the top shelf, easily accessible, along with my Trivial Pursuit games.
I made a pilgrimage to the new Container Store in Bellevue and found all kinds of great stuff there, including lingerie-drawer organizing boxes in my new color combo of blue and brown, which I have always loved but has always been hard to find till this year, when it is suddenly in fashion. And the most adorable CD boxes that they were unfortunately out of when I went back last night. A few weeks ago I went to the Kasala store's outlet/warehouse to look for something that had been discontinued, and lo and behold, the three-drawer chest and five-drawer chest that I have long coveted at this most trendy and cool of stores -- not to mention extremely expensive -- were there. The big one was badly damaged on a side panel, but I think I can at least glue it down, and no one will really ever see it except me since it's at the bottom. The woman there knocked it down to half price for me, and the three-drawer one had some minor corner damage, but is barely noticeable, so I got them both for the price of one. Every time, I've talked myself out of these things, and every time I've still wanted them, so now I have them and they are so, so elegant and cute at the same time. The drawers are shallower, so I've had to purge more stuff, but it's not like I wear anything besides sweats these days, anyway.
Then I discovered the greatest tool of all -- plastic boxes with sliding drawers! I could at last make sense of the rest of the linen closet, where one shelf is piled with boxes of surgical stuff left over from my sister's care, Band-Aid boxes, hair crap, cosmetic bags, and other medicinal stuff. It's a big jumble normally, and now everything's in these lovely little see-through boxes with drawers that slide right out... whee. No longer does the box of purple nitrile medical gloves fall out on my foot anymore when I try to dig out a Band-Aid or get ready for a trip. (I love those gloves, even though they have bad memories -- and really, who doesn't want to have purple hands when they're putting medicine on the cat or something?)
I still have a long way to go toward making the whole place organized. I've finally found some shelf units small enough to fit in the kitchen area, and I can organize that once I get those bought and up (with more plastic slide-out drawer boxes! Yay!). And the office is still a disaster, though I'm working on it step by step, and hopefully at some point can cope with the extreme trauma of getting a new desk in here and creating some more linear space now that I'm working here all day. Things are pretty sad as they are. And this is definitely costing me a lot of money at a time I shouldn't be spending -- it's property tax month and I'm getting the new garage and all... but. There is nothing for me like the cleanliness and space created by organized boxes of things and furniture with storage space and clean lines. Plus, stuff that looks nice makes me way happier than old shoeboxes and plastic bags. I am not good at living in cluttered, enclosed spaces. I need white space around me, some room to move. The office gives me heebie-jeebies some days, it's so cluttered and disorganized, but now I have a goal in mind. Maybe someday, my rooms will look like you might find them in Real Simple magazine, and then I will know I've succeeded!
And hey, part of my ongoing purge is to offer things in case anyone wants them before I toss 'em out. I have two older Adobe programs that are free to anyone who wants them, you just pay the shipping (you can PayPal me if you have a verified account). One is PageMaker 6.5 for Mac -- this has everything still in it, including the big slideout box they used to put software in. It will probably only run on OS 9, but most OS X recent Macs come with the old OS partition already on it. The other is PageMill 2.0, a really simple, easy-to-use WYSIWYG Web page creation program (again, for OS 9). I wish Adobe had stuck with this for lower-end users who didn't need super complex programs. Let me know if you're interested.
feochadn and I were at University Village shopping center, and we went into the Crate & Barrel and she wanted to go upstairs and look at furniture and I said no, because I knew what sort of temptation awaited me and that it would likely result in a snap decision to buy some new furniture which I didn't need but would covet anyway. And that's exactly what happened. I found this fantabulous couch that was so firm, it was like another work surface. No longer would I be afraid to bring the laptop out to the living room and work there, because I wouldn't sink into the couch, leaving my hip and shoulder in agony! And it was a cool armless sectional. Alas, my house is so minuscule that I couldn't get the sectional idea to work any which way. But I bought it anyway. Around the same time, Pottery Barn, those fiends, sent me my usual catalog, but contained within was really smart-looking furniture for media, a coffee table, etc with my name on it. No, really -- it was called the Rhys collection. And it had storage up the yin-yang. So, I bought that too. And some other stuff from LL Bean's mission furniture collection. And then I painted some of the kitchen and got new appliances to match the stainless steel fridge I had to buy Christmas before last when the old one died. And then I painted the bedroom. So I had to get new shelves for that, you know? In the back of my mind, I know part of why I am doing all this is that I felt like new stuff=new feelings, that it would make me feel better to get rid of everything old. It didn't, but... it's been something to do.
All this made me unhappy with my closets, which are puny and horrible. So, then I went out and got some closet organizey things and I discovered this whole world of neat organization stuff. Put a few things in the closets as is, though eventually, when the garage is finished and I recover financially (if ever), I want to have one of those closet companies come in if they will work on such a small job, and redo the whole thing. But I've had stuff thrown in my lone linen-type closet for a long time willy nilly, including old letters (ah, remember the days of letters?) and my completely disorganized photos that were thrown in shoeboxes. I got a nice big faux leather box for the correspondence and whittled that down to the important stuff to keep (dredging up a lot of old memories in the process, some painful ones, too), and then I got a couple of cute little photo storage boxes and went through all the old pics, throwing out the stuff where I couldn't even remember people or there were duplicates or the pics were so crappy you couldn't see anything. Managed to get everything down to two boxes, and now they all sit nestled nicely on the top shelf, easily accessible, along with my Trivial Pursuit games.
I made a pilgrimage to the new Container Store in Bellevue and found all kinds of great stuff there, including lingerie-drawer organizing boxes in my new color combo of blue and brown, which I have always loved but has always been hard to find till this year, when it is suddenly in fashion. And the most adorable CD boxes that they were unfortunately out of when I went back last night. A few weeks ago I went to the Kasala store's outlet/warehouse to look for something that had been discontinued, and lo and behold, the three-drawer chest and five-drawer chest that I have long coveted at this most trendy and cool of stores -- not to mention extremely expensive -- were there. The big one was badly damaged on a side panel, but I think I can at least glue it down, and no one will really ever see it except me since it's at the bottom. The woman there knocked it down to half price for me, and the three-drawer one had some minor corner damage, but is barely noticeable, so I got them both for the price of one. Every time, I've talked myself out of these things, and every time I've still wanted them, so now I have them and they are so, so elegant and cute at the same time. The drawers are shallower, so I've had to purge more stuff, but it's not like I wear anything besides sweats these days, anyway.
Then I discovered the greatest tool of all -- plastic boxes with sliding drawers! I could at last make sense of the rest of the linen closet, where one shelf is piled with boxes of surgical stuff left over from my sister's care, Band-Aid boxes, hair crap, cosmetic bags, and other medicinal stuff. It's a big jumble normally, and now everything's in these lovely little see-through boxes with drawers that slide right out... whee. No longer does the box of purple nitrile medical gloves fall out on my foot anymore when I try to dig out a Band-Aid or get ready for a trip. (I love those gloves, even though they have bad memories -- and really, who doesn't want to have purple hands when they're putting medicine on the cat or something?)
I still have a long way to go toward making the whole place organized. I've finally found some shelf units small enough to fit in the kitchen area, and I can organize that once I get those bought and up (with more plastic slide-out drawer boxes! Yay!). And the office is still a disaster, though I'm working on it step by step, and hopefully at some point can cope with the extreme trauma of getting a new desk in here and creating some more linear space now that I'm working here all day. Things are pretty sad as they are. And this is definitely costing me a lot of money at a time I shouldn't be spending -- it's property tax month and I'm getting the new garage and all... but. There is nothing for me like the cleanliness and space created by organized boxes of things and furniture with storage space and clean lines. Plus, stuff that looks nice makes me way happier than old shoeboxes and plastic bags. I am not good at living in cluttered, enclosed spaces. I need white space around me, some room to move. The office gives me heebie-jeebies some days, it's so cluttered and disorganized, but now I have a goal in mind. Maybe someday, my rooms will look like you might find them in Real Simple magazine, and then I will know I've succeeded!
And hey, part of my ongoing purge is to offer things in case anyone wants them before I toss 'em out. I have two older Adobe programs that are free to anyone who wants them, you just pay the shipping (you can PayPal me if you have a verified account). One is PageMaker 6.5 for Mac -- this has everything still in it, including the big slideout box they used to put software in. It will probably only run on OS 9, but most OS X recent Macs come with the old OS partition already on it. The other is PageMill 2.0, a really simple, easy-to-use WYSIWYG Web page creation program (again, for OS 9). I wish Adobe had stuck with this for lower-end users who didn't need super complex programs. Let me know if you're interested.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 06:08 pm (UTC)Sounds terrific. Go, Gwyn!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 06:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 07:54 pm (UTC)Man, you must've freaked, seeing that short shot of me in my room looking through papers in my "earthquake preparedness" project vid. That's really what my room is like, unfortunately. Being poor (= can't buy more storage) and having no space sucks.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 10:05 pm (UTC)Hey, next time you're in the area, let me know. I have a present for you.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 10:08 pm (UTC)If not tomorrow, then next week I'm doing an Easter thing with the fam-damn-ly.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-08 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 04:49 am (UTC)I love the plastic boxes with sliding drawers. Really, I love all the containers that let me pretend I can get everything in order.