Creating Chaos From Chaos

Or, how I started the monumental task of reducing my packrat's hoard of THINGS that I own.

I am in the process of Freecycling the townhouse's dishwasher, the big black and glass shelving/display case that we removed from the living room wall (previously mounted the perfect height at which I would bean my head on the corner of it every time I rounded the corner from the dining area, incidentally), and have found a Freecycle recipient for the frou-frou fancy collectible doll that a co-worker gave me years ago.

My buddy came over today (after we tried out the Jumbo Dim Sum restaurant) and did the grunt work while I sorted and stacked the contents of the storage bin out in the hall. We're talking a space the size of a small bathroom, which had been filled to the ceiling (literally, folks) with boxes. In the end, we tossed 3 bags of garbage (Contractor's Glad garbage bags, no less), there are 2 boxes of old appliances to go to the Eco Station (goodbye to my late grandmother's two-door toaster and ancient electric waffle iron, neither used in over two decades), 12 boxes and a decorator table with glass topper for Goodwill. What I kept wouldn't even fill one 2-cubic-foot box. How's that for drastic culling?

I'm going to pack up some more of the living room knick-knacks tonight while I listen to TV, and tomorrow my trusty buddy and I are going to enter the mystifying and wild world of wallpaper steaming. I really pray that does the trick with that deity-awful wallpaper. Tuesday will be Eco Station & Goodwill dropoff, and I will pack what I can manage of the storage room here in the apartment. Wednesday is for cleaning the condo - dust, vacuum, and then we will begin to scrubscrubscrubscrubscrub! Damn, that woman, that so-called church lady, really was a slob. Hello, Dimwit, ever hear the one about cleanliness being next to Godliness?I do have to take a break from 12 to 2 p.m. for a mandatory work meeting, but that's about it, and we will have my boyfriend to help.

Thursday the plumber is coming, plus the complex's plumber will be shutting off the water to about half the townhouses so that the wrecked shutoff T for my main water supply can be replaced. Then my plumber will set to work; he has to replace the shutoff Ts on the two toilets, replace the upstairs toilet, and the sink in the downstairs bathroom. I figure it will be about a $600 -700.00 day. While the nice plumber is working, my buddy and I will be priming walls for painting. I have decided to reduce the workload a bit - I priced interior doors at Rona, and for about $160.00, I can buy new doors for both bedrooms, rather than repainting them. Friday and the weekend will be spent painting.........the bedrooms, including the closet in the master, the hall and the entry closet, and the living room. I will be painting the kitchen cabinets and doors/drawer fronts, but after I've moved in.

One thing that's working in my favor - my opthalmologist has ordered me off work until the 20th. He's not thrilled that I am going back to work then, he'd rather I took a break from the computer and paperwork my job involves for two weeks, but I can't leave the hospital in the lurch for that long. It's hard covering my shifts, as our pool of casuals has dwindled to two. The cataract surgery was a breeze, I have had practically no discomfort postoperatively, and there is slow improvement in my visual acuity on that side, a bit more every day. I am still sensitive to daylight, so I wear the (very Terminator-looking) shades whenever I go outside.

So, watch this space for the next barely-thrilling installment of the saga of La Casita de Luna Azul.