A Place for My Stuff

Facing the Wardrobe, 2012

Dealing with clothes is a topic that I've blogged about before.  Well, that was over two years ago, and some things have accumulated since then.

Here were some of the recently found wearable oddities:

• Poor People's Pub shirt, 2000-2001.  This is easily one of my all-time favorite restaurants, and I've been going there since I was a kid.  They make a new shirt every year.  I haven't worn this one in years though, and I already have some similar shirts.  My father-in-law collects these shirts, but my wife said that he probably already has this one.  I think I'll toss this one into the Goodwill bag.
• Two high school gym class shirts.  I went to a private high school, and even phys. ed. class had a dress code.  We had to at least wear one of these shirts, the matching shorts, a jock strap, and sneakers.  The shorts had a space where you'd write your last name in magic marker.  The shirts had one too.  They were also reversible, I guess to make it easy if you wanted to break the class into two teams to play.
  I absolutely HATED gym class.  I always did.  Hated, hated, HATED it.  It always had less to do with actual physical development, and everything to do with pretentious, asshole jocks.  It does NOT build any sort of social skills or "teamwork".  If anything, I'm convinced that events like the Columbine shootings wouldn't happen if gym class didn't exist.  Why this is still a part of public academia, I have no idea.  On top of all that, I have never been a sports fan, and to this day, I still hate sports.
  I should be BURNING this shirt.
• A shrunken sweater.  At this point I should just shrink it further to make a ski mask.  But it's easier to just add it to the Goodwill bag.
• A "Rock Cleveland" shirt that my father got me on one of his business trips, who knows when.  It's pretty small now.
• 34" waist pants.  Oh yeah, right, like I could still fit into these.
• A black "University of Charlotte" shirt.  This was presumably came from my dad too.  And it's rather small now.  I'm guessing I kept it so that i could use the black cloth for something.  Well, that hasn't happened.  Into the bag you go.
• Old work shirts.  I don't mean "work" as in blue-collar shirts to work in.  I mean free shirts that I got from companies I worked with.  This included at least one of those pull-over, partially-zippered sweatshirts.  I really don't wear these.
• Two nostalgic shirts.  These are tough to get rid of.  One is a fraternity rush shirt from my first year of college.  The other is a shirt I got made up in the mall when I was in the 8th grade, that shows a photo of metallica but with my face superimposed on Kirk Hammet's.  I think I'll pack them away and think about it further.  I've still made a lot of progress.

One last look at the bureau

OK, one final look at the bureau-top junk that got removed.

Before I continue though, I'd like to say that I hope this isn't just seen as a "listing" experience.  When I blog about things I've gotten rid of, I do get some idea of why I might have kept something in the first place, where some of the common problem areas are, and how I can hopefully eliminate some of that in the future.

• Stuff to shred.  Not all of this junk was to be carelessly thrown in the trash.  Some stuff was better suited for the shredder.  Like a piece of paper that had by bank account info on it.  Yeah, that gets shredded and burned.  Also, these papers that came with my prescriptions.  Do you get these too?  Especially if the stuff you're picking up comes in a tube?  You go to a pharmacy to pick something up, and they give you a few huge stapled pieces of paper with information you don't need, and in my case, my last name spelled wrong across the top in big printed letters.  Then on top of that, there's a set of instructions in the box itself.  Who needs this?  I certainly don't.
• A clear plastic bag that went to...maybe that guitar stand I bought a few months ago?  Maybe something else?  Well, enough guessing.
• Hate note from my wife.  I don't need guilt-trips in verbal form, let alone in written form.
• Tag from wife's yellow gold chain.  "14k", and a big price tag of which I only had to pay a fraction (Thank you, JC Penny!).  I probably should have photographed these last two items together, for comedic value.
• 2011 Concert Venue Schedule.  Yes, it has the band we saw listed in there.  But I really don't need this as a souvenir.
• Free brownies coupon.  We could not find this brand in ANY of the stores.  And the coupon expired last November.  I tried.
• Ozzy article.  My father cuts things like this out of the paper and snail-mails them to me on occasion.  I appreciate the thought, and I do read the article.  But 6 months later, I think I can say in most cases that it's safe to throw these away.
• More paper items.  Including a slip of paper with a BluRay player model on it (and I subsequently bought), a list of karaoke song numbers and a note on the back where an old karaoke cohort of mine is now hosting (which I don't think I'll ever get to), plus 3 envelopes (which initially freaked my wife out, because she thought I was throwing out a card.  Nope, just the envelope, honey.)
• 2 Hotel Key Cards.  Most hotels these days have long since ditched metal keys in favor of programmable, cheap plastic card keys.  Some of these we end up keeping as souvenirs.  But chances are that if it was a really good trip, you already have a ton of other souvenirs anyway that are better.  Time to ditch these.
• And finally, some clothing tags.  You know, you buy a shirt or a pair of pants, and see these things attached to them.  Some of them are even facy, like they're made of cork or something.  But if you've already been wearing something to the point that you know you're not going to return it, then these are junk.

Fighting the BureaucraZy - triangles and cards

Some more crazy things I found in my enormous pile on my bureau.  I think cataloging this stuff has taken longer than getting rid of it!  Oh well, that's why I have a blog.

• Broken triangle.  If you look in the stationary aisle of any drug store, you'll usually find a set of drawing triangles. Namely, you'll see a 30-60-90 triangle and a 45-45-90 triangle, sometimes packed with a straight ruler and a compass.  This is one of the 30-60-90 ones, and it has some history.  It came in a plastic case with some similar drawing tools, which I got sometime when I was in 6th or 7th grade.  I started using the case as a general pencil case.  I'm sure at some point I threw out the case, but the original contents are probably lingering around.
  
  I managed to hang on to this fragile triangle without breaking it.  At least, until recently.  I saw that one of the coners was broken off, and I'm pretty sure that happened in recent years. 
  
  In these past 25+ years, have I EVER used it?  Not that I can remember.  Does ANYBODY ever use these things?  Well I went to college for math, and I sure didn't use it for any of those classes. My wife and I however had a friend whose 11 year-old son wanted to serious get into drawing, and one of the comic-drawing drawing books we gave him mentioned all of the tools you should have: kneaded eraser, T-square, and so on, including the triangles.  So I was carring this triangle in my pocket and was waiting to give it to him.  Well, to make a long story sort, we're not associating with the mother any mre.  If the kid needs a triangle, he doesn't need a broken one.  Into the trash you go, triangle.

• Business cards, business cards, business cards!  These never diappear completely, do they?  Here are some examples of what I found:
  • A local music store who has since moved to a new location.  No need for this card.
  • Business card for a Vietnamese restaurant.  My wife and I lifed this place, but they're out of the way, and the only reason we went in the first place is because we got a Restaurant.com coupon for them, and they're no longer taking them.  Time to throw this out.
  • Appointment cards.  You know how they give these to you when you go to the dentist, the doctor, a massage therapist, etc?  Do you still hang on to these after the appointment is long over?  There's no need to.  If this is a place you go back to, you'll have their number elsewhere, or have future visits already written in your calendar.  Or even if you don't, they'll typically call you to give you a reminder.  I AM however glad I took a quick glance at these before I tossed them.  A while back I had an optometrist tell me I had "lattice degeneration", as she wrote on the card.  Good to know the name of it!

• Paper print-outs.  Several things printed out from the computer, which I don't really need now as a print-out:
  
  • Printed emails from a friend regarding a project we wanted to do.  Well, we still haven't done it.  I really don't know at this point if I'll ever get him to collaborate on something!  Besides, I have the emails still saved on-line.  So I can ditch this.
  • Likewise, a couple of math problems I was working on.  I may visit these in the future, so I put them in my "math" folder on my computer, and got rid of the paper.
  • Printed, edited list from Wikipedia.  And I can go back there to look it up again.  No need for the paper, even if it was a help back at that time I printed it.
  • Job description for a position I was going for in my last company, but couldn't get.  I sure don't need a reminder for it.
  • Old Job vs. New Job comparison.  I changed jobs recently.  It was a really difficult choice to make, and I was weighing my options.  So naturally I made a list to get my thoughts written down.  But what's done is done.  Time to ditch this.

The Non-Federal Investigation of Bureau: candies

I could easily make a dozen posts on the stuff I found on my bureau alone.  But I'll try to do this in groups.

One of the more glaring types of clutter you might find are things that are edible, in places where you should only expect to find non-edible items.  Even the types of consumable items that don't seem to have an expiration date, suddenly DO look "expired" in this situation.  It's the "ewww!" factor, for me anyways.

• Pepermint candy.  I must have grabbed this from a restaurant when I was leaving, shoved it in my pocket, then took it out and left it on the bureau before I went to sleep that night.  Then it got buried, like a fossil.
• Cough drop.  It reminds me of Rich Hall's Sniglet called "Lynthlyptus", defined as "Any cough drop found in one's pocket after a few days".
• Bottle of Nose-Spray.  Yes, I know, you can't eat nose spray.  But I figured I'd list this here, just for the "ewww" factor.  And not just because I just used the words "eat" "nose" and "spray" in the same sentence in that order.  Two things I learned about Afrin 12-hour nose spray: 1) it works, but 2) it's physically addictive.  When the package says "Do not use this product for more than 2-3 days", they mean it.  Keep using for more than that, and you can't clear your nose without it.  Thankfully, I haven't used it in years.  I could easily fill a blog post talking about my history of nasal problems, the surgery for my deviated septum, what products I've taken since then, etc., but I'm not going to.  I'm only going to say this: the Afrin bottle here had an expiration date of December 2008.  Afrin, I banish thee!
• Bag of Candy-coated Almonds. These were a take-home gift at a wedding.  Or whatever the term is for those things.  There was a little poem or writing attached that explained the symbolic significance of the candies and why there were that number in the bag, etc.  I have plenty of photos from that wedding, so I sure don't need a sack of stale nuts.  "What the hell IS this?" asked my wife.  "Almonds", I replied.  Then the exchange went something like this:
  "When the hell did you get them?"
  "You don't want to know."
  "Where?"
  "I told you, you don't want to know."
  "Just tell me! More than ten years ago?"
  "No, I CAN say that they're less than ten years old."
  "What are they from?"
  "Sigh...Dave and [Dave's wife's name]'s wedding."
  "Dave [last name]?"
  "Yes, that Dave."
  "When did he get married?!?"
  "I dunno. Uh, five years ago?  Six years ago?"
  "Jesus!"
  "Hey, I TOLD you that you didn't want to know!"

The Non-Federal Investigation of Bureau: Receipts

One of the new target areas on my most recent "to-do" list was my bureau.  Namely, the top of my bureau.  Lots of stuff collects there.  Come to think of it, that was the same situation with my father when I was growing up.  The bureau top became quite the stuff magnet.

I started to tackle this once and for all.  It's still a work in progress as I type this, mainly because it's been a careful process of sorting through it.  I'm most certainly going to end up throwing away most of it, but given that some of these things include papers with bank account numbers, receipts, etc., it's worth dividing the trash into "to be shredded" and "not to be shredded" piles.

The most popular type of item was, indeed, receipts.  Usually I'm very good with keeping receipts and keeping them separate.  Normally I keep them in my wallet, then eventually transfer them to an envelope when my wallet gets too full.  They then get transferred to their respective bank or credit card statements before being filed away with them. 

Still, I managed to find 20 loose receipts on my bureau.  Some of these were on my wife's credit card (she doesn't want to throw them away, but doesn't want to keep them either, so if I'm around she hands them to me).  Some were just too big to fit into my wallet.  Here's just some of what I found:

• 2 receipts for CVS.  For those of you who don't live in a region where there's a CVS and never heard of them before, CVS is actually one of the largest drug store chains in the US, second only to Walgreen's.  Growing up, my mother told me that it stood for "Convenient Variety Store", though it turns out that it's actually "Consumer Value Stores".  Of course, they never use that name, and I doubt half of the CVS employees know what it stands for.
  I guess I saved these for the "Extra Value Dollars" they usually print on the end of the receipts.  That's their cute euphemism for "coupons".  Usually when you end up buying a certain product, your coupon will be for some rival product of the same type.
  I used to go there a lot, but since moving in 2010 I haven't been around a CVS, so I go elsewhere.  So there's really no use for coupons or receipts like these.

• Several receipts from Daddy's Junky Music.  I'll have more to say about them in a future blog post.
• Concert ticket receipts.  And yes, of course they're for concerts that I already went to.  The funny thing about Ticket Master is that they not only give you a printed receipt in the envelope on a sheet of paper, but an extra printed ticket that just has your name and address on it.  My wife saw this in the pile I was throwing away and gasped "Don't throw out my ticket stubs!"  I showed it to her and explained that it was just a receipt.
• Ski rental receipt.  Now that was actually quite handy to have at the time.  They put me in ski boots that were ridiculously tight, even by ski boot standards.  So I went back to the lodge, showed them the receipt, and they set me up with new boots.  That was a great trip.  It was also about a year ago.  And I have photos from the event, so I don't even need this as a souvenir.
• A sticker type of receipt that says "Nonrefundable if lost or stolen" with a bunch of numbers on it.  What did this go to?  I have no idea.  I'm guessing maybe the lift ticket I got with the skiing trip.
• Dunkin' Donuts gift card receipt.  I have $5.82 left on my card.  So what?  (An amusing side note: many years ago I got directions to a wedding reception.  The lady who wrote the directions actually wrote one of the steps as "Turn right at the Duncan Donuts".  Since when did chocolate crullers become part of a royal Scottish clan?)
• Hotel receipt.  You know how they print out a full 8.5x11" sheet for this and slip it under your door before you leave?  Well, you can't fit that in a wallet.  But the bureau is no place for it either.  Into the shredder you go.
• A printed receipt from Edible Arrangements.  The person I gave the gift to got them.  That was back in 2010.  I could have started growing a new tree with the seeds by now.
• Optometrist visit receipt. All this really reminded me was that the bastards don't take my new eye insurance plan, when I thought they did.

 

Fireproofing Your Stuff

Some years ago I bought a "fire box".  This is a secure box that not only locks, but will allegedly survive a fire.  So if your house burns down, the stuff inside the box will still be intact.

Recently I was looking for some item and thought that it might be in the fire box.  I found the key and opened it and didn't see it in there.  More importantly, I realized I was keeping next to NOTHING inside of my fire box. In fact, it was stuff that I wouldn't even remember if a fire consumed my home.

Here's what made it from the fire box, into my trash:

• Old list of phone numbers.  This was a handy little card of hand-written numbers that I pseudo-laminated and used to keep in my wallet.  That was back in the mid to late 90s.  Most of the people on here are people I know longer talk to, already have their number stored on my cell phone and other places, or have since changed their number.
• Medical plan card to an old medical plan that I'm no longer on, and haven't been on in over 5 years.  Into the shredder you go.
• Spencer Gifts rewards/membership card.  They no longer support these.  But damn, I sure got a lot of use out of it back in the day.  At some point it felt like they were sending me $10 coupons every month.
• Discovery store rewards/membership card.  They too no longer support these.
• Karaoke slip.  You know, when you go to a bar to do karaoke?  And you write your name along with the catalog number of the song you want to do?  Not only is that particular night long since over, but I don't even have a clue what bar this was from or what song it was.

The moral of the story?  Fire boxes seem like a good investment...if you stuff you put inside is actually of some value to you!

It's the Rotting Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

"Ewww!" gagged my wife as she cleaned near the end table.  It was the pumpkin we bought back in October.  It was very green then, so that meant it would be lasting longer than it normally would have. But this one was...no longer solid.  It was practically melted on the table.

How could we have overlooked something like this?  Right in the living room?  I don't know.  As much of a pack rat as I may be, one thing I've always prided myself in is not hoarding any sort of vegetable substances or perishable items.  I may have had cardboard from food boxes sitting in the corner of my kitchen, but certainly not with rotting food inside.  So this was quite a shock.

But again, how DID we miss such a thing?  Well first of all, it didn't smell.  I'm sure we would have noticed something sooner if it did.  Second of all, it was on the end table next to the couch, but in a corner of the living room that's easy to look over.  I think we might have even had a piece of paper or somthing over it.  So there it sat, overlook and forgotten until it was time to clean.  And clean it, I did.

Keep the Hair, Remove the Clutter

Back to doing what I do best: finding oddities in the home.

• Hair removal system.  I am indeed a hairy guy.  This was something I bought to get rid of back hair.  I never got around to applying it.  And now I'm married to a woman who loves the hair too much to ever let me do it.
• Coupon from restaurant.  Not only did it expire, but I don't even live near the place any more.
• College junk mail.  Translation: "Give us more money, alumni!  We really didn't take enough from you while you were here!"
• Old cards and crap from doctor's office.  And this doctor sucked.  I went to her to check up on my sleep apnea.  And every time, it consisted of 1) Drive out of my way to get to the damn hospital where she was, 2) pay the $40 co-pay, 3) wait around until I could see her, 4) have her ask the same questions, 5) have her suggest to change my C-PAP machine to a higher setting, 6) pay for parking.  Needless to say, the cards aren't the only thing I've gotten rid of.  Her consultation was of no help to me. I was paying around $50 just to have somebody say "Yeah, put the setting up to number X".  I have no regrets of cancelling everything with her.
• Old shopping list.  Then again, I may just need this stuff again now.
• Old receipts, some with coupons for products I'd never use.  Into the shredder you go.
• Candy wrapper.  Well at least there isn't ancient candy in it

 

Ask yourself, "Would I Put My Mouth On This Thing?"

When you dig up an old item that was designed to have your mouth put on it, ask yourself: "Would I put my mouth on this thing again?"  Maybe if it was a trumpet or some other thing worth cleaning. 

But this gnarley straw?

No. I don't want to try to rationalize this one.  Into the trash you go.

Proof I Parked There

As I've said before, the car can be another clutter magnet.  More specifically, one type of item that seems to linger around is the paid stub for the parking garage or parking lot.

Why DO we hold on to these things?  Several reasons, I suppose.  Maybe we figure that if we paid so much for a damn parking spot, we're reluctant to throw away the one piece of evidence we get to take home.  Maybe we figure that we can secretly resuse them in the same lot in the future.  Though I doubt that would actually work.  Perhaps they're souvinirs.  Regardless, I seemed to acquire quite a variety of them.

The one you see above on the left is a painful memory.  When I first started working in the Boston area, I couldn't even get a parking space in my company's garage.  We were sharing it with other companies, and basically there was already a waiting list just to get a spot.  So I had to pay for a space in a nearby lot, every damn day.  And that was only if THEY weren't full.  They hand me one of these damn things to put in the windshield. 

On top of that, they started construction of a new building right behind the lot, which made it harder and harder to find a way to walk through.  You had to walk all the way around several blocks to get to work.  In the Boston winters, this was brutal.  At some point I made rough maps of the construciton site and tried to find other ways through.  And I wasn't the only one, judging from some of the cuts in the fencing.  I DID eventually get to upgrade to the garage though.

As for the "Diabetes Drive" piece, I really have no idea where this came from.  It's obviously designed to hang from the rear view mirror, but I just can't remember why I had this.  The closest I ever got to supporting a diabetes cause was buying bottles of Bret Michaels' Trop-a-Rocka Snapple (which I have to admit, tastes damn good).

Here's one I got from my friend who didn't have a car at the time, but since she was renting an apartment that meant I could use this temporary pass to park in the "residents only" section.  Too bad it expired in March 2001.