Serious Decluttering!

I have been decluttering all over my house. We have way more "stuff" than we need. We moved here over four years ago, from a large house to a smaller house. There are still boxes in the basement that we haven't unpacked. We have too many sofas, too many chairs, too many lamps, too many rugs, and way too many pictures to hang on too few walls.

I used to have the perfect kitchen, with a large pantry and lots of convenient pull-out shelves. Now I have fewer cupboards and a smaller pantry. So, I have lots of kitchen utensils and no place to put them. (I did make room for my new panini press, though!)

Also, I used to commute to work on the train and walk six blocks to work. So I had boots, scarves, gloves and hats that I don't really need for quick runs in and out of my car now.

To make my matters much worse, my hobby is quilting and I have accumulated a huge fabric stash. To go along with the fabric there are buttons, lace, ribbons, and all the embellishments that go with it.


The last two weekends have been devoted to the basement area. There is a large finished area, where I have all my craft supplies, and two unfinished storage areas. All of them are as full as they can be. Last weekend my husband went into one of the storage areas and just started hauling things out. I waded through it all, sorting as fast as I could to keep up with him.

I sorted things into the following categories:
1. Stuff to keep
2. Stuff to donate
3. Stuff to sell at the consignment store
4. Stuff to put on eBay

Last weekend my husband helped me take a huge load of things to the consignment store. On Tuesday a vets group collected several large boxes from our front porch. This past week I have made several trips to the Goodwill store. I have several boxes of things set aside to put on eBay.

This week I have been working on my fabric stash. This involved going to Target for shelving and storage units. This morning I spent four hours sorting and stashing my stash. I still need more storage!

When my parents moved out of their house, they had thirty years worth of "stuff" in their basement. It was a nightmare. I am determined not to accumulate things in that manner. It just doesn't make any sense. I have adopted a new policy. If I don't need something at least once a year, then i don't need it at all. This is going to take a while. This is going to be a long-term, ongoing project.

Fat Fingers?

Yesterday afternoon the Stock Market took a precipitous plunge. Now they are saying it was a "glitch".


They are theorizing that perhaps a trader typed in a "B" for "Billion" when he/she meant to type in a "M" for "Million". Big difference, huh?


The idea goes that someone had "fat fingers" which caused the typing error. Look at the keyboard below. How fat would your fingers have to be to type the "B" instead of the "M".


This morning I heard on the radio that the U.S. Congress is going to hold hearings to determine what actually caused the "glitch". Yeah, all those geniuses in Congress are really going to figure this out, aren't they? (Please pardon my sarcasm.)

What I'm Reading Now

Set in Salem Massachusetts with "witchy women", a mentally unstable main character, and an eccentric family with dark secrets. Hallucinatory and evocative... an escape from everyday life.

I Feel A Rant Coming On

This week I've seen footage from two big events: the Kentucky Derby and the White House Correspondents' Dinner. What do they have in common? Celebrities! I am so sick and tired of celebrities showing up everywhere.

The Kentucky Derby is a tradition about horse racing. Now they have a "red carpet" for all the celebrities. They take up all the room, spend all the money, and get all the attention.

The White House Correspondents' Dinner. What is the purpose of it anyway? It's become another "red carpet" event. Celebrities showing off again. What on Earth do the likes of Kim Kardashian and Pamela Anderson have to do with the White House? Why do they belong there? Why don't they have a lottery and get some "everyday" people in there?

Why do celebrities get to gobble up all the tickets to all the important events? The rest of us are delegated to the role of observers. Everywhere you look... in the front row at sporting events, at the premieres of everything, at all events that a lot of people would love to attend. Celebrities on the best beaches, in the best restaurants, spending their money on extravagant houses and clothing and jewelry while families struggle to feed their children. I wish they would all just fade into obscurity.

Bail Out

We bailed out Wall Street with taxpayer dollars...


I think I would rather bail out the fishermen and shrimpers in the Gulf Coast.



At least they didn't cause their own problems!

I'm Just A Fool For Singin' and Dancin'

Okay, I have a happier post now. Tonight we went to the Cincinnati Playhouse to see Ain't Misbehavin'. It was fabulous! The music. The choreography. The talent of the cast. Wow!


Ain't Misbehavin' features the music of Fats Waller. It opened on Broadway in 1978, and swept the Tony Awards that year.

I love musicals on stage. The singing and dancing just knock me out. I can hardly stay in my seat. My whole body keeps time to the music. I look around at the others in the audience and wonder how they are managing to sit still. My dream would be to go to every musical on Broadway. I know, I know... I want to live by the beach, and I want to see every Broadway musical. Impossible to do it all. But I sure did enjoy it tonight.

Fighting About Money

We just had another fight... about money. I hate fighting about money.

Here is how it started today. We were in the car, running errands. He had brought a bottle of water, which was sitting in the cup holder between us. I took a drink of the water. Here is how it went down:
Husband: "are you drinking MY water?"
Me: "well, I bought it (I do the grocery shopping).
Husband: "No, I bought it!" (meaning I bought it with HIS money).

Silly, right? Well, I reacted badly. I was hurt. This happens pretty often, with him reminding me that everything is "His" rather than "Ours".

I feel like my husband thinks I am a freeloader, and that hurts me. For twenty of the twenty five years we've been married, I worked. I never made as much as he did; my earning power did not match his. But we pooled our money and never thought about what was "yours" and what was "mine". Since we moved here, however, I have not had a job. The kind of job I had in downtown Philadelphia just isn't available here in rural Kentucky. Anyway, jobs are tight in general. So, I gave up and started collecting Social Security. Now he keeps reminding me that the money is "his". He's right... he is the earner now; but he makes me feel as if I should be contributing.

I would be happy to go back to pooling our money; but every time I buy something he says "I hope you bought that with YOUR money!". He told me that when my dental work exceeds our insurance maximum, it will have to come out of MY money. So now we have "his" money and "my" money (mine isn't very much).

I feel we are a partnership; I do contribute in non-monetary ways. I cook and tidy and shop and keep things in order. Besides, we are married; doesn't that connotate a certain "oneness"?