It was a slow day, but I accomplished a little something.

 

As most of my readers know, I am a Marxist at heart.  No, I have nothing for the words of Karl.  Instead, I cherish the words and antics of Chico, Harpo and Groucho.  Their absurdities prepared me well for the insanity we live with today.

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If one were to see the interior of my apartment, they would see an absolute mess.  Clutter is all about, and I am shifting one pile to another while I prune the contents of many storage containers, reducing the space  needed for the things I want to keep.

Today, I moved a large, irregularly shaped chest from behind my loveseat to an area next to my dining room table.  This caused me to examine the contents of each of the storage containers blocking it, and then toss out what I no longer want to keep. Even though I'm keeping a lot of stuff, I can make my way behind the loveseat and get at the individual storage containers, something I couldn't do before.  While doing this, I went back and forth between the living room and bedroom, taking care of cleaning tasks in each room.  I was able to empty 2 large storage containers, making the bedroom feel a little bit more open.  Now, I can get at the storage containers holding my winter clothes and put my summer dresses into newly empty containers to go in back of the loveseat.

Working in a cluttered room presents its difficulties.  While moving the chest, I knocked over a standing lamp and broke it.  (Thankfully, I didn't break the fluorescent bulb in the lamp, or the glass in the bookcase which was hit. Those would have been messy things to clean up.)  To fix the lamp, I had to disassemble it even further, putting the bulb receptacle in the correct position, then finding a way to keep the receptacle, stand, and shade in place, so that I could reinstall the bulb and have a working lamp again.  (Even after everything was back together, I still had minor problems turning the lamp on/off again that were fixed with a little effort.)

Right now, I have a few bags to take to the dumpster, as well as a large suitcase to bring back upstairs.  Will I do it tonight?  Who knows?  But I'm seeing slow progress in decluttering my place, and that's a good thing. 

Sometimes, one has to sort through a big mess

 

The above chest was owned by my late wife, and had been here for almost 40 years now.  It is an awkward piece of furniture, as it is not a perfect rectangular shape.  Instead, from the side, it looks like a slice pf pizza after most of the slice has been eaten, leaving only the crust and a little bit of tasty stuff.  It's a solid piece of furniture that has a bit of wear and tear, needing some restoration to make it look nice again.  And it's taken me a while to create a path to access this chest, so that it could go to some needy person.

Why did I mention this?

Well, my computer desk has the same degree of mess that the rest of my apartment has.  And tonight, I ended up emptying it, so that I could toss out CD-Roms for software that I no longer use.  While sorting through the mess, I found several things, including a $50 bill, a book of forever stamps, a bottle of Opium perfume bought on one of my first cruises as Marian, and a few other things.  It's amazing what one might find when one starts to tackle a mess.

As usual, it's 2 steps forward, and one step back.  But it is progress, even if it is imperceptible to others.  Soon, I will go back to eliminating clutter from my closets, and I expect that I will find enough old clothes that I won't use that will go in another donation bag.  Ideally, I will eventually wind up with a capsule wardrobe for both Marian and Mario, having eliminated the stuff I no longer need to wear, want to wear, or enjoy wearing.

It has taken me roughly 40 years to accumulate everything in the apartment.  But I hope that it will take me much less time to clean it up.  Do you know of anyone in the Northern NYC suburbs who'd like to take this chest off of my hands?

The darned thing has been assembled, and the old chest is gone!

 

The chest has finally been assembled, and the old one is out of the house.  But this wasn't the simple thing that it sounds like.  

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When we awoke this morning, I had to figure out a way to get the old chest into a place in the living room with enough space for me to slide the new chest in its place.  This was not a task I was going to do as Marian, as I knew I was going to work up a sweat and ruin the nightie that I was given for Christmas.  Instead, I put on the clothes I had worn a couple days before and then started my process.

First, I had already emptied the chest of things I wanted to keep which were previously stored inside. However, I still had to disconnect the TV that sat upon the old chest and place it in a safe place - my bed.  And only then, could I extricate it from its space in my bedroom.  As I pulled it out, it started falling apart, due to it being a cheap piece of furniture from 40+ years ago. Even worse, there was a lot of dust and cobwebs behind the chest that I had to clean out, as I might never go back there for several years.

Once I got the old chest in a safe place, it was time to slide the new chest in its place.  The first problem I encountered was that the sliders didn't help me move the chest past the carpet protectors in my desk area.  To deal with this, I tilted the new chest up, and asked RQS to put sliders back into places where they could again do their function.  The next problem came soon enough.  The new chest was slightly wider than the old chest, and I had to snug it against another chest and my air conditioner.  AARGH!  And this led to the third problem: I had to use a slider to left the adjacent chest 3/8", so that the decorative overhang on the top of the adjacent chest would not be pulled up from the body of that chest. Finally, the new chest was in place, and I began to transfer clothing from another chest to the new chest, giving RQS a place to put her clothes.

Now, I had one more task to take care of: Bringing the old chest down to the dumpster area to be picked up with the next bilk trash pickup.  To do this, I had to lift the old chest over an end table, and then wedge it through the doorway and onto the top landing.  While doing this, the old chest started falling apart,  One crossbeam and a 3/8" laminate board came off the side, making the chest unusable for any scavenger that may come upon it in a dumpster dive.  Other pieces came undone while I dragged the chest down the steps and over to the dumpster area.  A little later, RQS took the drawers and placed them by the (now) destroyed chest.  Sadly, if this chest was as solid as the inexpensive Ikea chest that replaced it, it would still be in my apartment.

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Did I really need to deal with replacing this chest now?  Probably not.  But since the old chest's drawer glides were broken, I could no longer use the chest to store anything I wanted to get at on a regular basis.  Now, I can get to my lingerie and some of my feminine wardrobe without problem.  Maybe now, I can go shopping in my dresser and closet again, and not buy things to only end up in a donation bag several years later.

Now that the holidays are over, I can catch up on my posts.

 

RQS usually comes to my place on Friday afternoons and goes back home on Mondays.  If I go to her place, I'll usually arrive on a Friday, and leave on a Sunday or Monday depending on which side of the street I was able to park.  This holiday season is different.  RQS came up on a Friday, and will not leave here (with one exception) until after holiday season ends.  So I'll be catching up with occasional posts which describe what happened....

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The weekend before Christmas followed our usual pattern.  RQS arrived on Friday, and we ended up going out to a Chinese restaurant in Mohegan Lake.  (It was a choice between having Mexican for the 3rd time that week, or having something different.  Different won out.)  Once we were finished with dinner, we drove home for the evening.

Saturday came, and we ended up taking care of a couple of errands before driving to Ikea.  I wanted to replace a chest of drawers which is gradually falling apart with a cheap, but tolerably solid unit.  This would allow me to port clothing from one chest to the new chest, allowing RQS to be able to store more of her clothes at my place.  This would make it easier for her to stay for longer periods of time, when she has nothing much to do at her place.

Why did we go on Saturday, and not Sunday?  Bergen county, New Jersey has "Blue Laws" which limit the types of business which can be conducted on Sundays.  Furniture sales is not one of the permitted business activities.  So, we had to make it to Ikea on Saturday.  Otherwise, we would have to wait until after Christmas to check out the chest.  Once there, we wandered through the store until we found the chest in which I was interested.  RQS mentioned that I wasn't sure of the chest's dimensions, and convinced me that I should wait until I was sure of the measurements of the chest.  (I had previously measured the chest, but lost my confidence in my measurements, given that I had done this over a month ago.)  So, we browsed the store and bought a couple of things before leaving.  Just before we checked out our goods, we looked at the packaging for the unassembled chest - each of the two boxes weighed more than I wanted to lift into the car.  This meant that I would order the chest, and let someone else deliver the packages to my apartment.

Although we talked about stopping by Lane Bryant while in the neighborhood, holiday shopping traffic in Paramus scuttled this plan, and we went home for the night....