Perambulations in Verbiage

I have a hoarding problem. I come by it naturally, as in it runs in my family. I'm actively fighting it, as I don't want to have the same issues that my parents are currently dealing with in their basement, or end up leaving a house full of meaningless stuff behind for my step-kids to dumpster after I'm gone. Which is what my grand parents did.

So. Magazines. A giant box of them, left behind when I moved out of my parents house nearly twenty years ago. I've been really good recently, about disposing of magazines & catalogs after I have perused them, or switching entirely to digital when I can.

I was horrified. What was in these things that I needed to save so much that I BOXED THEM UP and stored them? Was my brain going to tell me I still needed them? ACK! So I started looking. And well, instant relief.

Decorating magazines (LOTS of decorating magazines). But I have a Pinterest now. Digital Hoarding = FREEDOM from paper!!!

Also, a pile of Writer's Digests with no longer relevant writing and publishing advice, (I've got the internet for that now) nostalgic only because they are direct evidence of my parents and grandparents (they all bought me subscriptions at one point or another) belief in my writing ability. I may take a few pictures to remember them by, but I don't have to keep them.

Take that, hoarding brain!

For one thing, water continues to really want to be involved in our major life events. We were soaked and cold on our wedding day, and have been soaked and cold during this entire moving process. Boo. I mean, SNOW?!?!! Really? I thought "out like a lamb" indicated Spring, not "White & Fluffy".

Also, being soaked and cold all the time, plus the stress of moving, pretty much = entire family ill with bad cold for weeks on end. What fun. The worst bit for me is that I'm starving all the time, but nothing tastes good - or at all, for that matter. Well, that and the wracking cough. Hello cold medicine, cough drops and Emergen-C.

Bonus round: While cleaning at the old house on Sunday, I realized that there was a problem with the heater - no heat & no hot water. Which meant that I couldn't really clean, since it was nearly freezing inside the house. As I really don't want to have to clean up ANOTHER flood just before we hand over the keys, I called the management company. I think I'll be doing that a lot in the next 4 days. I did haul away a bunch of recycling, however.

On the plus side (finally): At our new home, we got most of the master bathroom & kitchen stuff put away over the weekend. And the living room is livable. Tonight, we tackle the dining room and possibly some of our bedroom, since some of the furniture in the staging area dining room belongs there. Large portions of this move in to the new place are sort of (in some cases literally) stacked on top of one another - we have to have THIS in place to be able to move THAT, and so on. I picked at the tail of the beast by putting a few more things out of the way in the cellar, but that is definitely not a permanent solution.

Next up - moving furniture and purging more things.

So - moving - Bleah.

Saturday we picked up the truck and installed the pets at the new house with no trouble. (Dog in crate, cats locked in master bathroom, safely out of the way.)

Trouble waited until we were trying to move. For one thing, we were nowhere near ready enough to move all our stuff - not enough boxes, not enough packed, not enough cleaned - ack!

Then, just before Friends arrived to help us start loading the truck, disaster struck in the form of a broken tap attached to the washing machine. I carefully turned the on/off knobs to OFF, which was clearly marked by the word "OFF". The hot water tap leaked a bit, but came away with no problem. When I unscrewed the cold water tap, water came jetting out, full force, with the tap clearly still ON despite the fact that it was turned off. Tried to hold back the tide with my hands and a bucket while yelling for gmskarka & Electric Boogaloo to come and help. They finally came downstairs & heard me, and we took turns bailing & going to the garage (next to the laundry room) to search for the water cut-off. Yes, I know, we should have known where it was, but in the previous 8 years of renting, we'd never needed it. Searched all over/around the water heater for something resembling a shut-off valve - no dice. Called the management company - no help, since they said to look where I was already looking - next to the water heater.

Finally found the damned shut-off lever, BEHIND and ABOVE the water heater, after about 15 minutes of flooding. My hands were so cold that I couldn't move the stupid thing, so one of our kind friends did it for me. By that time, water had been pouring for about 15 minutes, flooding the kitchen, the laundry room, the bathroom off the laundry room, and part of the garage and the living room under the carpet, because this place was built on a slab!

We then spent some time mopping/scooping up water that had been contaminated by the cat-litter strewn under the washer & dryer (bloody cats!). The water is gone now, but the cat smell remains. There is still a LOT of scrubbing to do. Plus some more packing, although most of the furniture is moved.

Last night, the very lovely radcliffe helped me pack up most of the kitchen while I emptied a couple of rooms upstairs. Tonight, the last of the packing/moving & more cleaning is in our future.

1) Sick. Have been so for over a week with a cold that fluctuates between giving me a few sniffles here and there and leaving me feeling like a plague victim. After sleeping about 18 hours Monday (aided by furry water bottles in the form of two cats and a dog), I'm up and moving around, but everyone still sounds like they're underwater.

2) Moving. Ack! From a two-story townhome with garage on the edge of town to a single-story house with a cellar in my favorite part of town and in walking distance to almost everything. And did I mention the built-in cupboards in the "new" place? They're everywhere. I love them. With all the bookshelves we're bringing with us, we may actually have space for ALL of our books now. Until we buy more, that is. And of course, there are all the hassles of moving to be dealt with over the next month. Did I mention I hate moving? With a firey passion that burns greater than a thousand suns? It sets off pretty much every trigger I have about security and "my stuff".

3) Item 2 sort of derailed my 52 project for now. I'm going to have some serious catching up to do after March, or I won't be pleased with myself at all. At least I'm still managing to write a bit every day.

"mottainai"

"Mottainai" is a Japanese word that means "don't waste" and conveys the idea that wasting useful things is actually shameful.

It's a good word.

You may thank the No-Impact Man blog for todays lesson, since that's where I saw it mentioned.