A Place for My Stuff

One "bad" shirt is enough

Clothes, indeed, are a common form of clutter.  This is far from being my first time talking about them.  Obviously, we need clothes, but the reality is your wardrobe follows an 80-20 rule: 80% of the time, you're wearing the same clothes that make up only about 20% of your wardrobe.  Those of you readers who may be embarrassingly shitty at math can pause here to read that link and think.

This time though, I just want to talk about one specific item: the "bad shirt".  This is the shirt you wear when you absolutely don't care what happens to it.  It's ideal for painting fences, doing outdoor work, or in my case, getting my hair dyed.  These are certainly good to have.  Like many, I've admittedly been in the habit of "Well I don't want this t-shirt and would never really want to wear it.  But I did get it for free.  So I'll just keep it around as a 'bad' shirt."

The problem however is when you try to keep 5 to 10 of these things in the house, when really, 1 or 2 is usually more than most individuals will need.

Do yourself a favor.  Go into your bureau and closets, and find the "bad" shirts.  Do they have holes or permanent stains and you use them for dirty work?  Or maybe you keep them clean, but specifically just to sleep in?  Well I guess you can gather those too.  Now see if you can afford to get rid of some of these.  Chances are you can.  Start making your own bag for Goodwill.  That's what I did.  But more on that later.

Oh yeah, and the self-indulgent "30 Day Song Challenge" that I started earlier.  We're up to "A song that reminds of you of somewhere", followed by "A song that reminds you of a certain event".

This song reminds me of a special secluded place down by some abandoned railroad tracks, where my friends and I would hang out back when I was a teenager. That's because we usually had this cassette tape (Led Zeppelin III) playing on the boombox.  We nicknamed the place "The Void".  Maybe I'll get around to writing more about it.

 

As for "a song that reminds you of a certain event", here's one that reminds me of my 30th birthday in Las Vegas.  It was blasting in front of the Bellagio during their water show.  That whole birthday trip will easily go down as one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life.

 

Taming the Cables

Here's something that I'm sure many people might have scattered all over their home: electronic cables.  These can come in all sorts of varieties, including

• RCA connectors.  Whenever you bought a new DVD player, television, surround-sound system, VCR, stereo, or any number of other audio/video devices, chances are the item also included one of these.  These are usually pairs of cables colored red and white on the ends, or a trio of cables colored red, white and yellow.  If the world stopped making them, I don't think anybody would really care.
• Other video connectors.  HDMI is the biggie these days.  Component video cables are still used.  Then you have the rather short-lived S-video cable.  Not to mention the coaxials that we used back in the olden days.
• Audio adapter pieces.  1/4" to 1/8", or 1/8" to 1/4", mono to stereo, stereo to mono, RCA to 1/8", CD to cassette deck adapters, and all other little things that you had to buy at Radio Shack at some point or another.  I'm proud to say that I actually got organized with this problem YEARS ago, by buying myself a little Tupperware container at the local "Dollar Store" for the sole purpose of keeping this things together.
• Phone cables for your landline.  And in my case, several adapter pieces.
• Computer cables.  For past and present devices you've own: monitors, printers, Ethernet cables, digital cameras, web cams, and USBs of various types.
• Music cables.  If you're a musician, then like me you may have guitar cables, little stompbox cables, XLR cables, MIDI, and who knows what else.
• Power plugs.  Well, they're not really cables I suppose.  But they still go to electronic devices and they do get separated and mixed around with the aforementioned items.

At some point in the last year or so, I managed to round up a ton of these and put them all into one huge box.  At the time, it was a satisfying clutter conquer.  Of course now, a year later, I was stuck with this big box in my living room that contained a twisty, tangled, Gordian Knot of cables.  So I got to work in sorting them.

I sorted the cables into the above-mentioned categories, more or less.  Then I used a few 1-gallon plastic Ziplock bags to group similar ones together.  Boy, I had more of those RCA cables than I thought.  I had even more S-video cables.  I put bag of digital camera cables near the computer.  The sorting helped condense the space, and the bags keep everything from being unsorted again.  I've still got a box o' cables, but it's at least smaller, more manageable, and out of my living room now.  I also took some of the higher-quality ones in the box and swapped them out with the cheaper cables I had been using in my home theater.  And I may just put up an eBay auction soon, because otherwise I don't know what I'd do with eight s-Video and a dozen RCA cables.

Oh yeah, and as for that so-called 30 Day Song Challenge?  Up next I need to find a sad song.  That's easy.  Neediness by The Residents.

 

Not wanting to end this blog on a totally sad note, I'll go on to song #5, the "song that reminds you of someone".  This song reminds of one of my manipulative ex-girlfriends who has thankfully been completely out of my life for years.  I felt so relieved once that roller coaster of a relationship was finally over.  RELIEVED.  Stronger.  I put on this song on my drive home, and it just felt great.  It still makes me feel strong and relieved.

 

The 30-Day Song Challenge

I was reading the blog of an acquaintance of mine, and she had gone through "The 30-Day Song Challenge".  I believe the idea was started on Facebook, but its been making its rounds over the internet.  Basically, the challenge is to refer to some song once a day with the given criteria:

• Day 1: Your favorite song
• Day 2: Your least favorite song
• Day 3: A song that makes you happy
• Day 4: A song that makes you sad
• Day 5: A song that reminds you of someone
• Day 6: A song that reminds of you of somewhere
• Day 7: A song that reminds you of a certain event
• Day 8: A song that you know all the words to
• Day 9: A song that you can dance to
• Day 10: A song that makes you fall asleep
• Day 11: A song from your favorite band
• Day 12: A song from a band you hate
• Day 13: A song that is a guilty pleasure
• Day 14: A song that no one would expect you to love
• Day 15: A song that describes you
• Day 16: A song that you used to love but now hate
• Day 17: A song that you hear often on the radio
• Day 18: A song that you wish you heard on the radio
• Day 19: A song from your favorite album
• Day 20: A song that you listen to when you’re angry
• Day 21: A song that you listen to when you’re happy
• Day 22: A song that you listen to when you’re sad
• Day 23: A song that you want to play at your wedding
• Day 24: A song that you want to play at your funeral
• Day 25: A song that makes you laugh
• Day 26: A song that you can play on an instrument
• Day 27: A song that you wish you could play
• Day 28: A song that makes you feel guilty
• Day 29: A song from your childhood
• Day 30: Your favorite song at this time last year

Don't worry, I'm not going to strictly do this and nothing but this for 30 days, for several reasons. 

I suppose the alleged reason for people doing this is that it gives the reader insight into the blogger, lets the blogger jog through certain ideas that can be reflected and expanded upon, yada yada.  But come on, let's face it.  Talking about music you like or posting clips of it from YouTube is really just a mental masturbation exercise.  You have music that you love, and you expect other people to realize just how awesome your favorite music is, while at the same time you're probably not interested in seeing it from the reader end.

Then again, I'm of the opinion that there's absolutely nothing wrong with self-indulgence, so long as you acknowledge it for what it is.

So I am going to do this for the sheer fun of it.  Rest assured, I have no desire to turn APlaceForMyStuff.org into nothing but a music-lover babbling blog for the next 30 days.  But you'll see every one of the 30 song challenges mentioned in various blog posts over the next few weeks, sometimes multiple ones in the same day.

Let's start with the first few.  Challenges easy to state, but pretty hard to narrow down: your favorite song, and your least favorite song.  I could spend hours and hours contemplating this, but for now I'll just throw out the first that come to mind.

Favorite: "Public Animal #9" by Alice Cooper.  WHY this song was never a huge hit, I have no idea.

 

Least favorite?  Well there's a funny thing about least favorite songs.  A lot of them, at least in my experience, are catchy and stay stuck in your head for days.  And that's why you end up hating them.  One song like this that comes to mind was from an obscure 1990s computer game called "Total Distortion".  When you'd die, this is teh song that would play:

 

And finally, I'm going to combine song #3 (a song that makes you happy) with song #17 (a song that you wish you heard on the radio).  Because besides making me happy, this song SHOULD have been a hit, damnit:

 

No bringing your lunch to school!

Time to stop and take a look at some stupidity in the news:

"Little Village Academy on Chicago's West Side has implemented a strict ban on all outside food brought to school. Unless children have a medical excuse, the Chicago Tribune notes, they are required to eat (or at least try to stomach) cafeteria food."

http://activistcash.com/news_detail.cfm/hid/4425

 

I can just imagine it now:

 

"Hello, Mrs. Davis?  We're calling to let you know that your son has been expelled.  He was caught dealing in the boys' bathroom."
"Oh my God!!!  He was selling DRUGS?!?"
"No, ma'am.  Twinkies."

Hoarders on House

There are pretty much only two currently-running television shows I regularly keep up on: Doctor Who, and House.  I really love Hugh Laurie's character, probably because he reminds me of myself.  You know: viciously sarcastic, misanthropic, genius, unapologetic, scruffy, atheist, a musician...what's not for me to admire about this man?  For those who aren't familiar with the show, Doctor House leads a team of other doctors at Princeton‑Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and each episode essentially revolves around cracking a medical case. 

As often happens in House episodes, some of the doctors went into the patient's home to get some clues as to what might be causing the strange ailment he or she has.  This past week, the doctors went into the home to find out that the patient was a hoarder:

I wish I had more parts of the dialogue written down, but here was one very memorable quote:

Patient: "I'm not a hoarder.  I'm just a major slob."
Doctor: "You save ear wax."

Just in case I need to know the moon phases for crop season

Recently thrown out stuff:

1. 2009 Old Farmer's Almanac.  That means I probably bought it in 2008.  But yes, OFA is the oldest continuously published periodical in America, going since 1792.  Why did I buy this?  Did I want to know the moon phases and really doubtful weather predictions for that year?  Actually I remember buying it because some of the articles looked interesting, and also for the novelty value.  Well, I'm done with it.  Though I have to wonder: in all the years they've been publishing this, did anybody ever tell them that it should be Farmers' and not Farmer's?  Because it was written for more than one farmer, and the way to write the possessive form of a plural word is to put the apostrophe at the end.  Their competitor got it right.
2. "The Walking Company" dehumidifiers.  I got these with some pair of shoes I bought from them.  I was told to keep them inside the shoes when I wasn't wearing them.  I did that for some time.  Then these two little pieces of wood just hung out in my closet.  I really don't need two little blocks of wood.  I don't even have a gig as a percussionist.
3. Setlist to a George Carlin bootleg.  Ah ha, I was looking for this!  Not clutter.  But it's time to put it with the recording I made from the audience that night.  Done.
4. Instructions for my can opener.  And it's not even an electric one.  But it is actually one of those ones that actually opens cans by undoing the seal around the top, instead of cutting in.  Nifty device.  But once you figure out how to work it, do you really need the instructions?
5. Yahoo Maps printout.  I'm sure I'll be stumbling across more of these in the future.  As I've mentioned before, my new car has a navigation system, and even if it didn't, it's not going to hurt to throw away a set of directions that you're not going to use (and can look it up at any time) in the next year or two.
6. Ruby Tuesday...recipe?  I admittedly did not take this photo recently.  I just happen to be writing the blog about it now.  But I can't remember what this was.  Some kind of recipe?  Restaurant hours?  Expired gift certificate.  Who knows.  But I knew I threw it out for a good reason, which is why it made it into this photo.

Clutter in a Pineapple Under the Sea

My wife often insists on falling asleep with the TV on.  Usually the channel is set to The Nanny on Nick.  That often means waking up the screams of Spongebob Squarepants. 

This morning though I woke up to a Spongebob episode about sentimental hoarding called "Sentimental Sponge". Here's a crappily-filmed home bootleg version to give you an idea:

 

Did any children walk away from this episode with a realization that you can't be sentimental over EVERY piece of physical matter in your life?  One can only hope.

 

The "Hulk Pants"

Never marry a nymphomaniac, or else this will happen to your pants:

Actually that's not quite true.  But I asked my wife for an introduction for this blog entry, and that's what she jokingly suggested I write. 

I've noticed that from time to time I get crotch-wear in my pants, which tells me when it's certainly time to get rid of a pair.  Maybe it's all the sitting I do in an office all day long.  Maybe I just buy cheap pants.  Maybe both.  In any case, once you know you're ready to get rid of them, you might as well have fun ripping them off of you, literally.  Charities like Goodwill won't take clothes with holes anyway.  What you see in the photo hear are pants ripped to the point where you can see the front and back simultaneously.  (So in case you first looked at that photo and thought I had an enormous ass, you were wrong.)

I've blogged about clothing here before, and some of my next blog entries will probably be about the topic too.  It is indeed a commonly huge source of clutter.  You'd be surprised how long some people can hold on to an article of clothing.  Especially if it still fits and is still in one piece.  I remember having a white Opus shirt from 6th grade all the way into college. I had a trig teacher who often wore a pair of plaid pants he said he had since he was in high school.  Then again, teachers have never been known as hip dressers.  You can't exactly hit the most fashionable stores on a small salary.