Sleeping Through This Week’s Project

I haven’t slept well the past few weeks so Saturday, the day I usually do the decluttering, got taken out by an afternoon nap that became a full on afternoon sleep. So I didn’t get anything done this week. Sorry.

I think I post these just so you all know I’m not back in the hospital or intentionally flaking off this project.

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Quick Report> More Comic Pricing Organizing

Not much of a report, and this only took all day because I couldn’t get to sleep until late Friday night which meant waking up late Saturday.

Anyway it was about pricing that first set of comics. I got the prices last week. This week I went through and found out which miniseries or storylines would be best served if I sold them as a bundle rather than individual issues. This is still something I need to consider. By selling one storyline as a bundle anyone wanting that whole series gets the storyline all at once without hunting individual issues. It was also a good idea to reduce the price a bit to get that storyline together in one set. That’s just marketing.

On the other hand what if you’re someone who has parts of the miniseries or story arc and just wants the single issues he or she is missing? Well, would there be more benefit in selling the comics individually? Next week the mission will be to go through the various options, pick one, and start loading items so that’s when I’ll make the final choice there. I also had to resort the comics back to how I had them (with some minor variations) because the stack wasn’t in alphabetical order. Between the original bag breaking and having to just shove them into another bag (which also broke) they got all jumbled up. So that had to be fixed to make them easier to get and send out.

That bring us to next week and finally deciding on where to sell them and to make the account and start listing stuff. I may try a few different options or go with the one…we’ll see what happens.

Quick Note On Twitter Updating

No report this week because things got a bit distract-y and I spent Saturday catching up with stuff from earlier in the week. I did want to note that if you’re using Twitter to see when I update that WordPress and Twitter aren’t getting along at the moment. I can’t auto-update posts to Twitter currently so any posts that go live I have to manually update Twitter on.

New articles (when I get the chance to make them at the proper time) go up here Sundays at Noon ET and I’ll update the BW and personal Twitter feeds with the new post when I’m able to get online to do so…unless I forgot. There should be email and RSS feed subscriptions in the sidebar to the right, which will also let you know when I update with a new report.

My apologies for any inconvenience but it’s kind of out of my hands at the moment.

Filler Video (Still Dusting): Artist Organizes Her Art Space

The dusting continues. Today the last area of the bedroom (I hope by the next time I have to dust I can do a whole room in a day–it’s not even that big a room) and next week I start on the studio. So it’s time to watch someone else declutter in the hopes of picking up a few tips.

I like to draw and sometimes I actually have time to do it. My current art corner can go from digital to analog and back again, which is why I like it. However, I do find myself doing minor tweeks to the layout trying to get it completely serviceable. Perfect is an illusion and needs change depending on what you’re doing. So when I put “declutter and organize” in the YouTube search bar this time a video about one girl’s quest to organize her art space got my attention. YouTuber and artist apple.cheeks shows us some of the ways she’s found to organize her art space, but some of these could also work for any home office area you have. Check it out.

Filler Video> The Dark Side Of Minimalism

This week and the next…maybe few weeks I want to focus on the long overdue task of dusting up here. Now that my medical issues are at least under control if not behind me I can be a bit more active. I need to work up to where I was, within the extra limits of my age, and I’ve never been very good at knowing when to dust. Whether or not this contributes to my allergy issues in the Spring I’ll leave to experts.

So I wanted to find another motivational video, because dusting is a boring topic and so are the issues we’re having with the TV and phone provider, which is the only other topic I have to discuss. And I’d have to stretch to get that done. However, the video that grabbed my attention was called “The Dark Side Of Minimalism: ‘Decluttering Ruined My Life'”, which given the current obsessional with minimalism when it comes to decluttering intrigued me. Posted by A to Zen Life in January 2023, the host talks about her experiences discussing the minimalism movement.

It’s not a condemnation of minimalism but…you know the theme song from the 80s sitcom The Facts Of Life that opens with “you take the good, you take the bad”? Well, it’s hard to do that when all you hear is the good. Nobody talks about the downsides of going minimalist, though there have been nagging issues in the back of my mind over it. So watch as the host goes over things you should consider before doing the opposite extreme of hoarding and turn your decluttering experience from something beneficial to something toxic.

Wishing You A Happy Easter

Hopefully your Easter has gone well. I had trouble sleeping all weekend so I didn’t get to write the article I was planning, but I wanted to post something at least related to the holiday, as a follower myself. See you next week.

Dusting, DVR Cleaning, And Self-Repair

I was hoping to do my dusting last week and give you an interesting article this week. Well, the last two weeks got the better of me. Last week I had to go for an ultrasound to check on the status of my kidney stones. This week I went to the doctor to get the results. The good news is that there are no more kidney stones, or at least it’s too small to show up in the ultrasound. This is after an extraction in 2021 but one was still left in there. I vaguely remember having a forced “go” that I thought might have been the stone but it didn’t hurt…I promise there’s only one more icky part to go…so maybe that’s when it went. Point it the last obstacle to my life, medically anyway, is finally no longer an obstacle. Well, that doesn’t leave me out of obstacles though.

So this week I got a little dusting done in my bedroom, but I paced myself and just did the one area. It’ll take me a few days to finally get everything dusted, and then I have other rooms I need to work on. I’ll get more into the problems why that’s taking so long in a moment, but as you can tell from the title there’s three discussion topics. The dusting part I mostly already finished discussing. It’s dusting. All I have to talk about there is why I need to pace myself more. The other problem this week is that we’re changing television providers…again, meaning I also have to work around getting everything watched before we change over later next week. So I’ll talk a bit about that as well. It’s not decluttering per say, but it is cleaning and you have to keep the stuff you’re still holding onto tidy after all.

Quick Report: Minor Cleaning Thanks To My Shoulder

March is a busy month for me this year. I had numerous medical appointments, one each week practically, set up for this month. This week it was a colonoscopy. Getting the pharmacy, doctor, and insurance to agree on a certain medicine took up time as well.

Additionally this week I wanted to get the bathroom clean. That should have still allowed me to do a decluttering project this week, but at some point I hurt my shoulder. Thankfully it wasn’t enough to see another doctor, given I’m doing enough of that this month, but at some point I must have slept on it wrong because Tuesday it started bothering me. It was better by Thursday so I started cleaning the bathroom…and Saturday morning it was hurting again. Clearly it hadn’t healed as much as I would have hoped, so this kept me from doing anything except nursing the shoulder. I took the opportunity to attempt to burn through my distracting YouTube backlog, which is a form of declutter if I stretch the project goal a bit…probably a lot depending on your point of view.

So I didn’t declutter (unless you count the backlog) but I did get some cleaning in. Also the colonoscopy was mostly positive (I still have Crohn’s and diverticulosis) so that’s a positive. Next week should be a book review, which given my schedule next week that’s all I’d have time for anyway, so expect a decent article then. Hopefully there will be no shoulder issues and I can get back to what I’m supposed to be doing here after that. In the meantime, hope you all remembered to set your clocks ahead for Daylight Savings Time.

Comic Organizing Mega-Project New Phase day final

Still an old photo. I don’t even have that air conditioner anymore once it started leaking.

Well, it wasn’t the victory I wanted but at this point I’ll take what God gives me and thank Him for it. I did succeed in getting the comics all organized…for now. All the comics I’ve already reviewed from Phantom to Zoids is all in place, the stuff I need to review still is separated and ready to be reviewed…all is well with the world more or less.

I was hoping to get all of the comics out of the studio and put them all in the bedroom. This did not happen. It’s not going to hurt anything but it isn’t helping anything either. I broke even, something a gambler may pray for if the game drags too long with a losing streak. I had to use all the plastic drawers, including the one my lamp is on in the studio. Now I’m sure they’re all in the right order because as I did this project I got smarter and learned from my mistakes.

Comic Organizing Mega-Project New Phase day 5

I didn’t get a lot done today, but I think I actually have a good defense. To help you understand let’s go back to 2016. If you’ve been here long enough for stumbled upon those days in the archives you know this was a hard year for me. Diverticulitis, an inflamed region of colon that had to be removed, with the rest connected six months later. Between those two surgeries I had a blood clot that put me on thinners for a year, minus the reconnection surgery and some dental work. This left me with a hernia that wasn’t removed until 2021, with a mesh added in there just for fun. And not dying I guess.

All of that, probably more the hernia as it restricted how much I could lift without major risk, led to me not doing a lot of physical labor over the past few years. So understand that running back and forth between two rooms with huge stacks of comics books takes a toll even when we’re only really working on half the collection. I was sore last night and had trouble falling asleep. So forgive me if I needed to take it a bit easier, and it may take two days to finish up depending on how much I overdid it. Still, I got something done or there wouldn’t be a report.