The All-New Bunrab

My niece Hanna came to visit with me for a few days last week, and volunteered to help me go through stuff. We didn't get mountains done, but we did get a couple of very important molehills cleared. First, we cleared off the folding table in the sewing room, so that the guest bed could actually be opened. And then we listed the folding table on Freecycle and found a new home for it almost immediately. (This still leaves me with two folding tables left, BTW, which are folded and in closets rather than unfolded and collecting junk.) Then, we cleared off the dining table, so I can now have people over for tea or even a meal. A few people, anyway - it's still a tiny table, and the dining room is tinier than it should be because of the huge sideboard which I hadn't meant to have follow me here from the house. And then, we started in on a few of the boxes in the box room (the third bedroom, the one which is also home to Fern and the piggles). First, we cleared out a plastic rolling cart - and that's currently waiting for its Freecycle taker to pick it up. Then, I started in on a big box which turned out to be some of my files from the 70s and early 80s - tax returns, check registers, etc - and a whole bunch of cards - birthday and christmas, mainly, also from the 70s and early 80s. Most of that stuff went into the "shred" pile; a shoebox' worth of greeting cards still to be sorted through for personal messages is still in the room. Make a note of that shred pile.

Then, also from the storage unit, a two-drawer file cabinet, full of all of Steve's and my files from the 80s and 90s - every pay stub Steve had ever received from the City of Austin, all our tax returns, all our electric and gas and water bills from Austin, homeowners insurance documents from our houses in Austin...so again, most of that could go in the "shred" pile immediately. Altogether, we filled three bankers boxes of stuff to shred, and one box of stuff I want to scan before shredding, so that I have some small record of it.

And then we took the three boxes of papers over to Sir Speedy in Linthicum and had them run it through their big shredder in three minutes flat, instead of having it sit around the house waiting for me to run it through 3 sheets at a time in my tiny, very noisy, shredder, which would have taken several days of several hours apiece. It was worth every penny to have it disappear that fast, and every penny was still under $20. So it's not still sitting here, silently in the way, reminding me of unfinished stuff. And now I know where I can take the next load of similar stuff, instead of trying to force myself to shred a boxful myself and hating the waste of time. Definitely a victory. Oh, and the file cabinet went on Freecycle, had an immediate taker, and is now out of my way.

And we found three more boxes of paperback science fiction, out of which I kept about 30 books and about 200 went to Goodwill. Stuff that Steve liked that I didn't, incomplete series, nothing valuable or collectible or important. Just straight to Goodwill, along with the contents of an entire box which was full of unopened kits for cross-stitch christmas ornaments. Some of those were expensive kits in their day. But if I haven't gotten to even opening them in 25 or 28 years, I'm not going to - and it's not like I don't see three more similar boxes we didn't get to.

And then Hanna and I met up with Cindy to go to an art gallery opening and a fancy dinner, and on Sunday Hanna came with me to a concert the Montgomery Village band was playing at a retirement community, and then I put her back on a train to Pennsylvania. The whole process of commuter rail and Amtrak is so easy up here, and since Hanna qualifies for disability discounts, it's cheap, too, so I believe we will repeat this a few more times! Meanwhile, she starts back up in her freshman year at Temple next week, so she just has this week to get through at home with her noisy siblings. It is one of the features of being from a large family, that college dorms are downright peaceful and uncrowded by comparison! Fewer people to share a bathroom with! She's enjoying that feature as much as I did my freshman year.

This week, so far, I've done nothing except crochet. I need to take the Christmas tree down, don't I?