#477 More Basement

I did more in the basement today, still working on it after this break. The past two Saturdays I've taken over 20 bags of paper to the recycle center. So far today I've filled 12 more, and emptied 11 boxes of paper and junk. I'll take the paper to recycle on Wednesday. (They're gonna ban me pretty soon!)

Would you believe a huge box, about 2 feet on all sides, filled with nothing but maps and tourism brochures of Europe, and every American state, dating from the 1970s through 1990? I'm throwing them out. How about a box full of unopened mail from 1982? Or twelve large envelopes of "benefits information" and signup forms from Carnegie Mellon, from when Jay was on the staff there in the mid-70s? Unopened, of course. I wonder if he has retirement benefits languishing there.

A lot of the junk is actually useable stuff, still in gift boxes, so I'll take some of that to the recycle center too, for the trade shed. Maybe somebody will regift them. Jay's ex was a teacher, so she got lots of little gifts that she never used, and her decorating style was cutesy-poo, which isn't me. So the three huge wooden lawn geese are going away, too. (I lean more toward a herd of pink flamingos peeking out of the woods. I'm Victorian with a touch of kitsch.)

We can't put books in the recycle bins, and I'm finding a lot of trash hardcover books down there, like 30-year-old chemistry and math textbooks. I don't know how to dispose of them. Plain garbage, I guess. But awfully heavy.

Many of the boxes I'm getting into now are placed low, on the floor or on bottom shelves. They're too heavy to lift (being full of paper and books), and working on them so low, bending over, is hell on my back. I forgot to put the brace on earlier, but I will definitely wear it when I go back downstairs, or I'm going to be really hurting. My left leg is already burning - a warning sign. Or maybe I'll just give my back a break and cut up boxes instead.

Pretty soon I'll have some shelf space for the storage containers I've been filling with fabric and trims from upstairs. Then I can start clearing up here.

Progress. Slow, but progress.

~~Silk