Entry tags:
Death cleaning
Yesterday ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere read aloud a post from one of her FB friends about getting rid of excess stuff so one's friends and heirs don't have to deal with it all. On this inspiration, she started triaging T-shirts: keep in bedroom, keep in attic until summer, donate to Amherst Early Music auction, give away to SCA or living-history people, give away to thrift store, throw away. (Is that technically "hexaging"?) And suggested that we start tagging our books in LibraryThing with where they should go after we're gone; I think she's already found a home for one or two historical-costume books from periods that aren't our main interest.
Meanwhile, I went to the basement. There were about a dozen screen windows that have been waiting twenty years to be put into actual window frames. I didn't install any of them, nor even measure them to figure out which window frames they would fit in, but I threw out one that was wrecked, and consolidated the rest with the screen windows in the garage so at least they can all be dealt with at once. Put some glass storm windows on the curb for recycling. Put some cardboard framing supplies on the curb for recycling. Threw out a whole lot of wood scraps. Swept parts of the floor that haven't been swept in fifteen or twenty years (cough, cough!). Put seven sliding closet doors out on the curb for recycling/composting/trash. Ditto one solid wooden house door. And a bunch of finished-and-painted plywood shelves that no longer fit thecloset book-wall in our spare bedroom after its renovation 2-1/2 years ago. Moved some pine board-stock and long pieces of molding out to the garage, to be with their friends. Sorted the remaining hardwood board-stock by width and put it all in one corner of the basement. And then shalmestere came downstairs and was so impressed that she threw out dozens of scraps of open-cell foam (keeping a few large pieces to use as padding in instrument cases). There's now quite a large pile of stuff for trash, composting, and recycling on the curb, and the basement (while still fairly packed with stuff) feels much roomier and more passable than 24 hours ago.
And thenshalmestere pointed out that today is MLK Day, and there will be no trash, composting, or recycling pickup today. Trash will probably get picked up tomorrow, but composting and recycling not until next Monday. I don't know whether the wood scraps and doors count as "trash".
shalmestere read aloud a post from one of her FB friends about getting rid of excess stuff so one's friends and heirs don't have to deal with it all. On this inspiration, she started triaging T-shirts: keep in bedroom, keep in attic until summer, donate to Amherst Early Music auction, give away to SCA or living-history people, give away to thrift store, throw away. (Is that technically "hexaging"?) And suggested that we start tagging our books in LibraryThing with where they should go after we're gone; I think she's already found a home for one or two historical-costume books from periods that aren't our main interest.Meanwhile, I went to the basement. There were about a dozen screen windows that have been waiting twenty years to be put into actual window frames. I didn't install any of them, nor even measure them to figure out which window frames they would fit in, but I threw out one that was wrecked, and consolidated the rest with the screen windows in the garage so at least they can all be dealt with at once. Put some glass storm windows on the curb for recycling. Put some cardboard framing supplies on the curb for recycling. Threw out a whole lot of wood scraps. Swept parts of the floor that haven't been swept in fifteen or twenty years (cough, cough!). Put seven sliding closet doors out on the curb for recycling/composting/trash. Ditto one solid wooden house door. And a bunch of finished-and-painted plywood shelves that no longer fit the
shalmestere came downstairs and was so impressed that she threw out dozens of scraps of open-cell foam (keeping a few large pieces to use as padding in instrument cases). There's now quite a large pile of stuff for trash, composting, and recycling on the curb, and the basement (while still fairly packed with stuff) feels much roomier and more passable than 24 hours ago.And then
shalmestere pointed out that today is MLK Day, and there will be no trash, composting, or recycling pickup today. Trash will probably get picked up tomorrow, but composting and recycling not until next Monday. I don't know whether the wood scraps and doors count as "trash".
things you can do with T-shirts
One can also turn the shirts into yarn and weave them into rag rugs; I'm kind of liking that idea too although mostly as a way to use up the rest of those free tees from Linux conferences in the Nineties and early Oughts.
One very practical thing we do with old tees is make them into earloops for facemasks. The pattern we use involves strips of T-shirt fabric adjusted with pony bead sliders, and we've already used up a shirt and a half on that.
And they make good rags for oiling wood, beeswaxing cutting boards, polishing silver, and the like.