Wow, an hour goes by fast when you are hopped up on coffee and trying to get things done! I felt the urge to deal with more stuff in the Box Room, but I am going to force myself to stick to an hour a day (except maybe weekends when laziness and yard work rule). That way I won’t get burnt out on it … hopefully.

Now I need to go find a box cutter. We are bound to have at least one around here or in my truck. I have a bunch of boxes to cut down and bundle up. That’s a good feeling.

I may even post photos later. Not that it doesn’t still look like a nightmare of a room just filled with boxes of junk, because it does, but I am rather pleased with my progress.

But first, more coffee and a box cutter search.

UPDATE: I forgot to hit the post button before toddling off on my next mission(s). Oops. I’ll blame it on the coffee buzz.

So now I spent another hour chopping cardboard boxes into 2 foot by 2 foot squares, bundling them, and putting them out for the recycling truck. I was a little grumpy about the trash trucks coming late today, but in the end, it’s a good thing. Otherwise, I’d have had bundles of cardboard sitting around somewhere until next Thursday. As soon as they come empty the trash bin, I’m going to go stuff today’s bag of garbage into it. I don’t know what to do about all the huge pieces of Styrofoam I need to get rid of. Too much to put in the bin, because we do have actual household trash that needs to go in there for the week too, and recycling doesn’t take it. Maybe I can convince Lin to take it with him to work and toss it in one of the construction dumpsters. I suppose I could pay the surcharge for extra bags of trash next week, but I would really rather not. We pay enough for trash pickup as it is.

Not going to make it to the craft store today. I will be running to the drugstore though. We are out of aspirin, and I desperately need one right now.

Behind the cut … promised photos of the embarrassing mess known as the Box Room and some more babbling.

I swear to you, I am not a hoarder. I may have a few hoarding tendencies, mostly for things I use in artsy stuff (which has gotten out of hand lately), but this sort of collective mess is not what I would call the norm for me. We just didn’t know what to do with it all, and we had planned to have a workshop by now where we’d have had the room to sort through it all at our leisure without messing up the house too much or having cats rummaging through it while the boxes sat around being sorted. That didn’t happen, and then it was just easier to ignore it, and so we did.

Here we have the before photo. I wish I had moved the pink foamboard before I took it, because the boxes were stacked just as high as the rest of the room behind it.

Pretty freaking awful, isn’t it? As you can see, over the years as we stuffed more crap in there, it got almost all the way to the door. There was literally a 1 foot path to the window, and that was the only floor you could see.

But … I’ve gotten a lot done in just two hours!

The truly observant — and older — will note the microfiche reader in the photo. Uh huh.

I know, I know, it still looks like hell, but there is improvement! I have thrown out a bunch of stuff, and the box of stuff to pass on to others is going out soon too. Maybe even tomorrow … when I also plan to finally get rid of the Commodore 64 stuff sitting in the living room. Won’t that be nice! It’s going to be hard to get rid of the computer stuff, but I am never going to do anything with it. I can’t even stand to play Final Fantasy VII anymore due to the gameplay graphics being too simplistic. I’m pretty sure whatever fun I had with the C64 is all in the past. I want the room in my living room!

What started all this cleaning out madness? I got mad. Not overly angry, but definitely mad. Lin is never going to do any of these things, and if I wait for him to get started on them or want to work on them with me, it is never going to happen. I know if I nagged him, he would, but I hate nagging, and it isn’t entirely his fault. The guy works really hard, and he is often really tired. I don’t blame him for not wanting to deal with a room full of junk, putting up door trim, painting, and all the other stupid stuff that needs to be done around here. OK, I blame him a little, but I am trying to be understanding.

The bottom line really is that I want my promised craft room where I can have all my artsy projects laying out for as long as I need them to be without bratty cats getting into stuff … and a room that I can go into to work that has a door I can close so I won’t be distracted by the other human in the house. The only way it seems that is going to come to pass is if I do it, and so I will.

Well, I guess I have babbled enough for now. I’m hungry. Must be time for some breakfast and some more coffee!