This weekend, Karin was a packing superstar, labelling tens of boxes and purging like a rockstar! Thanks to her efforts we have at least 6 fewer carloads worth of stuff that will be coming with us to the new house. That’s AMAZING!
Archive for the ‘decluttering’ Category
Doing My Part
2012 -
11.12
In prep for moving, we’re decluttering. I’m doing my part by going through the myriad of bath products we have on hand and using them up. Yeah, pretty much daily baths…talk about taking one for the team. ;)
In other moving news, we’ve looked at 12 places, short-listed six and have two more to look at today, then will make our decision this afternoon. We’ve got one strong front runner, but there were a LOT of people interested so fingers crossed…
Decluttering
2012 -
11.06
We’re planning to move on December 1st. We’ve both been very comfortable and happy where we live now (a two bedroom condo) but with The Passenger on the way, we want to try and find something larger and cheaper (we’ve heard a rumour that babies sometimes need “stuff”). It’s tricky because between the two of us, we’ve only moved three times…and I don’t really count the time my parents moved me when I was eight months old.
Staying in one place for a really long time (27 and 29 years for Dave and my first houses, then five years here) means that a lot of stuff gets accumulated. It doesn’t help that we both have hobbies that require a lot of stuff to do them. We’re also both bookworms and have many, MANY books, not to mention DVDs, kitchen things, clothes, video games and computer equipment.
Our somewhat excessive Costco habit doesn’t help. :/
It’s time to start purging, even though we’re planning to have a larger place. With luck, we’ll get rid of half of our belongings (eek…) and have a much easier move and a fresh start in our new place.
Purging Weekend
2012 -
07.20
Whoa…Karin here. I can’t remember the last time I posted. Hi!! *waves*
The best laid plans… After having a LOT of stuff we want to get rid of lying around our condo for months, we’ve FINALLY booked a time for the diabetes association to do a pick up. At the moment, we’ve got literally a dozen garbage bags filled with clothes, books, household items, blankets and more ready to be donated when the truck comes this Sunday. If you think you may want something that we might be getting rid of, or if you want to come check out the free stuff, tomorrow (Saturday) is your last chance for this particular load. Let us know! :)
Busy Day
2012 -
03.09
We both had quite the full day today. I met Karin after school and we did some organizing of her classroom so that it’ll be more pleasant to come back to after spring break! Karin did most of the work, but I got most of the checkmarks (maintaining the to do list has it’s advantages). We dealt with a lot of stuff, and I think that she’s going to be really happy when she walks in on that Monday morning 17 days from now. I think we dealt with 5 boxes and two aquariums.
We took a break and had dinner at Red Robin, dinner was nice although they seemed a little understaffed.
We then made a quick trip over to Ikea to see if we could pick up some extra shelf pins for the Ivar shelves that Karin has in her classroom. They didn’t have any in the spare parts vending machine, so we looked around a bit then took a number to ask if they had any extra ones that we could buy. They gave us the 20 pins that we needed no charge. So that was nice. Thanks to the nice lady at the returns/exchanges desk.
Back to the school to finish putting the shelves together and deal with a few more things. Then finally heading home.
Oh, also finished the first phase of the eSub System for Abandoned Towers (subject to Karin’s final acceptance testing) which allows for contest submissions.
The Classroom
2011 -
09.03
Duh Duh Dugh! Definitely the storyline for the week has been unpacking Karin’s classroom and getting it ready for students next week. Normally you wouldn’t think this would be a big deal, but last year Karin’s school underwent seismic upgrading which means that her classroom needed to be packed up to be moved to a new school/classroom, and this time last year unpacked and setup, then at the end of the year (June) packed up and moved back to her old school (but a new classroom). That’s probably a little hard to follow, here’s the timeline:
- June 2010: old class packed up for moving to new school/class
- August/September 2010: unpacking at new school/class
- June 2011: packing at formerly new school/class
- August/September 2011: unpacking at old school in new classroom while construction is still ongoing to finish the seismic upgrades
So she’s back at the old school, in a new classroom, HER classroom. She’s organized, and it shows. Here are some “after” shots of the classroom setup (there’s still a bit of work to be done, but the heavy lifting is finished). Perhaps Karin will post the “before” pictures in the next couple of days.
Her desk and area:
The pop machine last year’s class made for her:
View out the windows near her desk:
View out the windows at the other side of the classroom:
The bulletin board on the cloakroom (I did the papering):
Another bulletin board, and are those expertly assembled Ikea Ivar shelves? Why yes they are:
Another bulletin board, and are those expertly connected computers? Why yes they are:
Rolling cubbies with books in front of the radiator:
Full room shots:
So it took a lot of work this week, most of it by Karin, with help from her mom, and minor contributions by yours truly. The results thus far are very impressive and satisfying, should be a great year!
The downside is that Karin has a very sore back from all the work she’s been doing, so hopefully that will pass quickly, hopefully.
Return of the Queen
2011 -
08.12
Ok, so it’s not really quite that epic, but I felt the need to use a literary pun. Yup, hate me because I’m brilliant AND funny.
Karin got home today just after 3pm (local time), which means that the whole long list of things I had hoped to get done were not. That said, the lack of completion really has more to do with having a cold than with Karin arriving a few hours earlier than I had expected. That said she appears to have been quite pleased with what was accomplished in her absence.
Despite the fact that it was quite warm today, we ended up with a lasagna from Costco for dinner tonight (the frozen one) because that’s what Karin wanted. It was pretty delicious, but the company was better.
We watched Going the Distance tonight as well, Drew Barrymore and Justin Long. I thought the movie looked funny when it first came out, but we never got around to seeing it. In watching it, it exceeded my expectations of hilarity, and we both enjoyed it quite a lot. “Mia statue!” It could be that we’re in the unique position of being reunited after an extended period of time apart (the movie is about a long distance relationship) which made the movie more apropo. Regardless, much laughter ensued, and it will be remembered fondly. So on that note: “Dan, take me to Berlin!”
Getting back on track…
2011 -
08.11
Definitely in the getting better portion of the cold, which has allowed me to get working on the list of things I’ve been trying to do while Karin’s been away. She’s expected back tomorrow (currently in Kamloops), so it’s unlikely that it’s all going to get done before she gets back, but I expect that she’ll appreciate what has been done regardless.
Unfortunately with the cold the list has gotten a lot longer, mostly because I’d like to try to get all traces of the cold out of the apartment before she gets home, which means a bunch of laundry and emptying of non-full garbage containers and such. But if the work can help prevent her from catching the cold it’s worth it.
Slowing to a Crawl…
2011 -
08.09
Progress in the tidying has slowed to a crawl. Yesterday, there was the unexpected visitor, then I went to Brentwood for lunch and met with my mom and aunt, then shortly thereafter with grandma. While wondering with them I got a call looking for some help moving a couch. So I left Brentwood and headed to Walter’s place. It was a heavy leather Ektorp 3 seater. We carried it around the back way, but had to stop 3-4 times because of the uneven weight distribution while carrying (we carried it on it’s back most of the way, which mean that one side was way heavier than the other). While we were resting in the apartment Jeff called and Walter convinced us that we should go for Happy Hour. So I returned home and showered, and then walked to Browns Social House to meet them for happy hour.
I was a little surprised to find them sitting with two ladies when I arrived, but it turns out that they were co-workers of Walter, and it wasn’t that they had managed to both bring/find dates before I got there (which would have been bad form since my date is current out of province). Sitting around on the patio getting a little too much sun and chatting for a few hours. We then picked up some Panago pizza and some drinks from Save-On and returned to Walter’s place. We got a meatball pizza on multigrain thin crust, it was interesting, not bad, but I wouldn’t order it again.
Due to all of these compounding circumstances I didn’t get home again until after 9pm… which is a long way of saying that I didn’t get much of anything done in relation to the tidying.
For the past few days I’ve been dealing with a sore throat, and unfortunately when I woke up this morning my nose was also stuffed up. I had been pretending up until that point that it might have been dust, or cleaning supplies which had been causing the sore throat, but no such luck. So today also has seen less than amazing progress.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day, we’ll see.
Making some progress…
2011 -
08.06
I’ve been doing a lot of moving and tidying and such this week, but today is the first time that I’m actually doing it at MY house. I’ve been making some decent progress, at least I think (I won’t go into too much detail, so that Karin has something to look forward to).
One of the things which has helped is a mix CD of songs that Karin put together for me a while back. She was pretty sneaky and asking me about favourite songs and keeping track of songs that I commented on when they came on the radio, so the end result was some pretty awesome songs all together on one CD:
- Crabbuckit, K-OS
- Cats In The Cradle, Cat Stevens
- Dust In the Wind, Kansas
- I Can’t Dance, Genesis
- Billie Jean, Chris Cornell
- Smooth Criminal, Alien Ant Farm
- Jumping Jack Flash, Rolling Stones
- No You Girls, Franz Ferdinand
- Just Breathe, Pearl Jam
- Piano Man, Billy Joel
- Smoke On the Water, Deep Purple
- Walking On Broken Glass, Annie Lennox
- More Than A Feeling, Boston
- Take Me Out, Franz Ferdinand
- No More Tears, Ozzy Osbourne
- Crazy, Gnarls Barkley*
- Superstition, Stevie Wonder
If you want to play them all (in order) you should be able to use this YouTube playlist: “Mix CD“…
* If you watched the NBC series “The Voice” Cee Lo Green is the singer in Gnarles Barkley.
