Recapturing a Room

My basement has been a default repository since we moved in more than forty years ago.  When we shopped for a home, we only looked at houses with full basements.  Ours has one, with about two thirds floor space and one third crawl space.  I inherited a workbench left for me by the previous owners.  Metal shelving I installed myself.  It did not take long fill them.  The owner also left for me a partitioned room.  It had a cheap red carpet remnant, attractive wood paneling, a wall outlet, and a switch.  Despite its potential, primarily as a home office, I never used it.  Instead, the shelving vertically, the floors horizontally, and the cinder block portion of our crawl space became flat surfaces to put things.  

Returning to the basement as one of this half-year's semi-annual initiatives has brought a new perspective.  My shelves have decent stuff.  Passover dishes, pieces for entertaining that we never did in a serious way, explorations into hobbies that never took off.  Many things worth having.  We also had two children.  They have a way of developing in stages to adulthood.  Along the way, they outgrow infant cribs, car seats, clothing, and gadgets that allow them to sit at our level at the kitchen table.  Safety standards grow in parallel with their growth, so many of these items, which largely line part of the basement walls, can no longer be accepted as charitable donations.

Children produce things.  At school, they create art, write compositions, and generate reports from teachers.  These have mostly found their way into paper grocery bags, which line the crawl space ledge and that very enticing room with the fire-engine red carpet remnant.

We upgraded our house periodically.  A lovely crystal chandelier gleams as we eat Shabbos dinner in the dining room.  Its predecessor found a place on shelves under the basement stairs.  I painted walls and trim in my younger life.  Those paint cans contain hazardous waste.  There are a lot of them.  We bought new carpeting and wallpaper.  Unused portions sit in the basement.  My wife and I upgraded our mattress.  The unused one takes up a huge amount of space in that paneled nook.

My wife, children, and I all attended universities for college and advanced degrees.  We bought books.  We took notes.  We lived in apartments.  All leftovers fill our basement.  

My wife retired after a 32-year corporate career.  Boxes of her work fill the basement.

A month into the semi-annual period, I have begun sorting.  I think the best bang for effort would be to take that pre-existing room and create a pleasant nook for my wife, or at least her things and her memories.  To do this, I would need to stand the mattress upright, having already succeeded with the box spring.  Then I need a large plastic bag and a carton of significant size, maybe one used to hold k-cups.  I need a lamp to plug into the outlet, my cell phone camera, and a marker.  Children's work photographed randomly, papers recycled in the box, discards in the black plastic garbage bag.  Stuff that does not stay there, like any exercycle or my daughter's starter bicycle, get relocated to the larger basement floor for ultimate donation or landfill, perhaps even a yard sale.  Clothing washed and donated if still wearable.  Mattresses hauled away by a clean out company.  Wash it all down.  Replace the carpeting, either broadloom, tile, or area rug with underbase.  Then move the boxes with my wife's stuff around the perimeter, or buy additional shelving for the perimeter.  Add a desk and a chair.  Add lighting.   

My effort.  Her space.  Would make a Mother's Day surprise, hopefully a welcome one.  It is within my capacity.

Disposing

Some projects are just big.  Eventually my house will require selling, likely forced, likely a burden to whichever of my survivors inherits this task.  I started.  My basement has the most unselected collection, stuff that I put there, my wife put there, the kids dropped off when they moved far enough to require air travel to their homes.  I have a lot of stuff stored there, most not needed, or even desired.  To make headway, I committed one of my semi-annual projects to its clearance.  Twenty minutes, twice weekly.  I've kept to that.  One recycling bin fully loaded, though pickup occurs only biweekly.  One big box taken to the state's twice monthly free shredding service.  

Amid the clutter, mice have found cozy nooks.   For the past twenty minutes I have tackled crawl space.  The state's program collects hazardous waste twice weekly, though in different locations.  I have a lot of paint.  Oil paints collected each week, latex only twice a month, on different days than the shredding.  So now I need to sort my paint cans.  I think most are latex.  At the edge of the crawl space, I found my medical books. Some thin monographs might still be of interest despite publication fifty years ago.  The textbooks do not yet qualify as antiques.  Those go to landfill.  My class notes fill a box.  I could empty the loose leafs to recycling, and either harvest or discard the binders.  One box, infested by mice, has my wife's unopened mail from nearly a quarter century ago. I extracted every paper, saved two of personal interest, emptied the box of its rodent calling cards, and then tote the paper and its box to recycling.

At some stage I will require professional help.  Our baby stuff predates modern safety standards.  We have mattresses, deteriorating carpet remnants, old patio furniture, obsolete or otherwise unusable furnishings that the kids dropped by.  I found a tambourine, usable.  I found part of a globe, not usable.  Along the crawl space we kept the children's school collections.  Photograph a few samples, recycle the rest.

There are services that could do some, along the lines of 1-800 Got Junk.  I think I can still make progress on my own, not counting items too heavy to lift or too bulky to fit in a garbage or recycling collection bin.  One or two boxes at a time.  Eye on the calendar for the state's collection dates.  Forty minutes a week, enforced with a timer, will enable the basement to function better.

Some things really have no home.  VHS tapes fill three boxes.  I discarded the pre-recorded movies.  I do not know which tapes just have convenient TV show recordings and which are videos of my children growing up.  

My first library loan of the calendar year was a ebook, The Swedish Art of Death Cleaning.  It expressed the same premise that I figured out on my own.  Either I dispose of my stuff or my survivors will.  While clearing a basement has its roadblocks, the bulky, the sentimental, things that are not mine, the book also had sections of my cyberspace imprint.  I'd like to keep some of that, my blog, YouTubes, other imprints of me that can survive me.  It may be cyberspace clutter, but cyberspace is big.  My basement is more finite.  I simply need to be persistent and decisive, convinced of the worthiness of my effort.

Surveying Stuff

Dealing with my cluttered basement has a place on this cycle's semi-annual projects.  On the first non-shabbos day to pursue them, I made mental excuses to avoid, or at least procrastinate this one.  Nature had another plan.  The Weather Service announced a local tornado warning, advising everyone to seek shelter in a basement if they could.  I looked outside.  Seemed legit.  And I had been in a real tornado with damage to a hotel across the courtyard during a visit to Mammoth Cave not that long ago.  So as much as I preferred doing other things, a half hour in my basement, temperature not that much above a wine cellar's, seems a wise thing to do.  

Since forced there, I might as well begin my project.  The space had a musty odor, more in the farthest corner than where I was, at the other end near the furnace and water heater.  Facing the furnace, I glanced at a not yet occupied mousetrap place by the exterminator at his last survey.  To my right, a work bench, all flat surfaces large occupied.  To my left, shelves.  Better place to start.  Interesting inventory.  On the floor immediately in front of the shelves I found my good cast iron hibachi, little if ever used.  I had considered replacing it, but the current Amazon offerings cost a significant multiple of what I paid.  It just needs a scrubbing and drying.  Then some grilling this summer.  The shelves had mostly items suitable for food.  Unopened were bamboo steamers, and ice cream countertop freezer, a silverplate chafing dish.  I had taken my mid-sized French press to the kitchen where I use it regularly to fill a large travel much with good coffee to take to OLLI.  I had long since forgotten that this came as a set.  The sugar holder and creamer matched to the press had remained in the box.  I have a better guest sugar/creamer set already in the kitchen, almost never used, so I don't anticipate having any need to take this set upstairs.  I have two beer growlers, one and two liters.  At one time Total Wine introduced craft beer from kegs.  If you bought enough beer, they would give the growler as a promotion.  Good deal as a combo.  Not a good deal as a refill, as the price of the beer, good as these selections were, soon approximated the cost of the wines that I usually purchase there.  Growlers returned to the basement.  

As a youngster, my father invested in an indoor Farberware grill with rotating spit.  Diets were different then.  Steak could come out of the freezer, get plopped on the grid for a half hour and there would be dinner.  For shabbos, a minute steak tied as a roast or a whole chicken could be skewered in the spit and made by rotisserie.  It took a long time but always turned out better than roasting in the oven, which is why this method of cooking remains popular for takeout.  Cleanup of this bulky appliance was never trivial.  I got one as a new homeowner, used it a few times, then retired it to a lower metal shelf in the basement, which it has occupied for some thirty years.  Perhaps when I make the veal roast or next whole chicken that has been taking up too much space in my freezer that could be used for other things.

Found a surplus of thermoses.  Don't know why I have so many.  And I have more in the storage nook that surrounds my kitchen, just below the ceiling.  Thermos bottles have largely been replaced with insulated mugs and tumblers.  These are designed to fit into the beverage holder next to the driver's seat, do not have to be uncapped like a thermos, and have no stopper as a loose part to get lost and make the item no longer serve its purpose.  They won't break like a glass thermos.  But I have a lot of thermoses.  As a practical matter, I always worked at a place that always had coffee for the taking, either in a hospital doctors' lounge or in my office.  Almost never brought soup or broth to work.  Almost never picnicked, though among the items near the shelves were a couple of insulated coolers, mostly yard sale acquisitions, and a woven wooden picnic basket akin to what Yogi Bear would seek out.  And appropriately stored, my two milchig iron casseroles purchased on sale with intent, though few occasions to make milchig in major quantity.  And my turkey roaster, used only on Thanksgiving, though less so as an empty nester when a quartered turkey breast is more suitable for a few dining companions.  And two good fleishig casseroles, retrieved once or twice a year for major dinners.  And a large coffee urn, last used at my father's shiva in 2009 but perhaps still ready for its Next Act.  I assume the cord is inside.

What to harvest.  Hibachi for sure.  Designate fleishig, scrub the cast iron.  And very portable for kosher grilling at a park or on my deck, with some protection for the wood.  Four cup coffee maker for sure.  I buy a lot of k-cups, mostly for convenience and variety.  They go on sale.  Bulk coffee of a fine brand such as Lavazza or Starbucks or custom ground from Sprouts also fills my cart when on sale.  One cup easy to make in a Melitta cone or in a French press, though the latter takes some effort to clean.  And I have a 2-4 cup French press, just right for filling an insulated mug, though also a chore to clean.  Neither the cone nor the French presses are really set it and forget it.  The cones need aliquots of water poured over the grounds which then have to be watched.  The French press coffees need to be timed.  But the auto drip works at its own rate.  Water in tank, coffee with filter in its designated position.  Carafe in its position.  Then push a button.  No need to keep track of water level or occupy myself until the timer runs down.  That goes upstairs.  Everything else stays downstairs, at least until I am ready to make ice cream, steam something in bamboo, or host a reception that needs these things.

And then look to the right to assess the workbench contents.

Mid-point Assessment

Since my personal goals are established semi-annually, twelve per cycle, at new year and at mid-year, the halfway point on the current twelve has arrived.  I did a little better than average.  I wanted to purchase a new mattress as the current one sags enough to impair sleep.  This calendar year I have stayed at a few hotels and can tell the difference.  I looked casually at IKEA and a few other places, priced on-line options, but have not purchased.  I will after the yom tovim.  Clearing the basement is my biggest tangible project.  I have made progress but will need to hire help with clutter removal.  It is really part of a grander aspiration to have a single storage place for our things, eventually moving items out of our rented storage unit.  My energy to this waxes and wanes.  Time needs to be scheduled as I did for creating My Space, though with far less motivation.

Financial review has gone on schedule.  My goal has been to do it with no action needed.

My children live an airplane ride away.  I plan to visit each.  St. Louis done.  California by year's end.  It's a very tangible project with clear end points and a certain pleasure to its pursuit.

My personal efforts are also mostly more tangible and measurable than they have been in advance.  I read my assigned three books and then some.  I've seen two movies on TV, one of two in the theater, leaving one more to go in the theater, which I can do after the yom tovim.  I have visited two old friends from high school, both in metro NY.  My three day trips included the Galer Winery in Pennsylvania, the Nemours Mansion in Delaware, and the Rockland Bakery in New York, none of which I had been to previously.

The remaining tasks may be harder to fulfill.  My weight would be better if about 10 pounds less.  I use weight as a measure, but it's really more of a process to promote my health.  Diet restriction has hit a lull.  I was eating breakfast every day for a while but gained a few pounds in the process.  I changed it to two meals a day which has gone better.  No snacks from 8PM to 6AM, based on research by a metabolism guru at U Colorado, has been reasonably consistent though not perfect.  Exercise was doing very well for a while, then sidelined following an appendectomy, then limited in the early morning by arthritic stiffness.  My consistency to moving it later in the day has been hampered by my OLLI schedule and I have not been able to recapture the intensity.  Still, weight remains the best objective surrogate of progress, even if the real but more difficult to measure goal is stamina and energy.

I had planned to do something beneficial for my synagogue, though I'm not convinced they want anyone other than the people already engaged to create anything new.  I asked the Rabbi in the past how I might advance the congregation.  He suggested I come to minyan more.  To be fair, I've hardly done dick, and counting in the minyan requires dick but his vision of congregational advancement seems much more shallow than mine.  I'll give it another go with the President and Rabbi and maybe some past Presidents after the yom tovim.

Then the two I probably won't do, develop a web site and write the book that makes me famous.  Writing has been on the list before in several forms.  And I do write well, but in spurts.  The web site got as far as initial inquiry.  I don't really have a good enough purpose for having one, though a more interactive blog with my own format could justify this.  Revisit by year's end.

So there's how twelve projects plod along, a little at a time.  All are doable except the Great American Novel, and even there if I believed in myself more I have the capacity to do that.  Some are done or almost done.  What interested me three months ago does not always sustain itself, so these are best approached as assignments rather than self-sustaining insatiable initiatives.  Most have a measurable end point.

As retirement makes the days more amorphous, the "should do today" list doesn't have any external imposition or any feedback other than what I offer myself.  Halfway through this cycle, doing OK.

Storage Space

My semi-annual projects, twelve in all, invariably include one or two home upgrades.  Since retiring, I've done much better at getting them done, though I was highly successful at refinishing my kitchen courtesy of a bonus from work.  For the most recent six month projects we have a refinished deck done a few weeks late, and while my Mancave remains less than that so far, I can sit at pursue purposeful activity at both my large upstairs desk and my more limited one in a living room nook.  These are all big projects, not necessarily expensive, though the kitchen was.  They require effort from me, planning and often plain physical effort.

My next six month endeavor has a literal part, making the basement function in its best way, and a more subtle aspect, to have a single storage destination for the entire house so that the rest of it can be less cluttered or limited to the things we use in each particular room.  Since leaving practice, I have paid a monthly storage fee which by now has added up to more than I would have spend fully remodeling the basement for any purpose I can imagine.  If I can create space in the basement, the contents of the storage space can be relocated and the monthly fees redirected to investment in my basement.

It is very large, one of the prime incentives to choose this house.  My plan thus far is to start from the center and work in a spiral pattern, keeping a trash bag and recycle container at hand as I go.  Initially this has progressed well, though I might also consider going for the low hanging fruit, paint cans that will never be used again, baby food jars intended for storing nails and screws that are empty thirty years later.  The spiral pattern seems better for now. 

I can move a lot of stuff in 30 minutes.