So Many Cables To Organize

My projects come in waves, and reassessment has become part of the “game” for me. For this week’s project…yes, I’m actually doing an intense project this week in case you missed those…it was time to go back through the cables and other stuff because the way I had them organized just wasn’t working.

The drawer above is in my studio, and it’s where I keep the cables and a few other electronic stuff. These are items I don’t expect to access that often because after this I put a small table in there. This corner is also my art corner, you see, and now every time I go in there I have to take the stuff off the table, move the table, knock over a CD rack of CD-Roms I still need to go over and forget they’re there (my computer situation is a bit annoying at the moment but that’s for another discussion), and then go through bag after bag to see if I can find what I’m looking for. Over the past few weeks I’ve had to go in there trying to find this or that. Well this week I wanted to make this task easier.

The goal: go through and better organize the cables so I can find them easier and reorganize this drawer with my regular electronic drawer to make it easier to find what I need.

Advertisement

Redoing The Cubby Hole

This week is another one of those projects where I do the next phase of a previous project. In this case it’s the cubby hole. Last time I didn’t post the finished part of the project. I did find a different location for the bike helmet and that opened up a little room. However, over time what I had in there got a bit messy as I tried to find stuff. This week the goal was to make it easier to find things, and I got to move something to a new location.

Operation: A Place For Everything received both a win and evidence that I still need to find places for everything. This is the longest I call stall this intro so apologies for those coming in on the homepage.

Quick Report: A Number Of Projects

This week instead of a big project I did a bunch of smaller projects that needed to be done. It’s a short list but I got up late yesterday.

• The toilet needed cleaning. Exciting, isn’t it?
• Continuing from a previous project I went through the papers and stuff from that shelf under the art desk. Some things were thrown out and some things shredded, and a few things I kept and put away, like some reading material and manuals. I then did the same with a few holders at my regular desk. It always hurts when I toss out old birthday and get well cards. They were given out of love and there are days I can use that kind of reminder, but otherwise they’re just taking up space. Unless it was hand made it’s better to send them onward, and I’m only giving that cavate because I’m a creative person and something not mass-produced means even more than something bought in the store and signed. Sentiment can only go so far when you need to de-clutter.
• Finally I updated my financial records because I let it slip…again.

So that’s all I did this week, small but needed projects.

Let’s Watch Someone Declutter Their Garage

Well, I was right about this week being crazy. It didn’t help that Saturday had blah weather around here and that killed what little motivation I had to do something this week. On the plus side I get to talk about something I don’t have to declutter…because our garage was already organized before this site and my declutter project proper even got started.

I don’t understand why people use their garage as a storage shed. Maybe it’s because we have storage space, but I’ve seen a garage not usable as a garage on multiple home improvement shows because there are boxes and totes of stuff taking it over. And of course there’s the old cliché of the wife yelling at the husband to finally clean out the garage, but the task being so monumental that he keeps finding excuses not to. So I wanted to find a video of a man cleaning out his garage. I wasn’t looking for anything that required a big financial expense or was setting it up as anything other than a garage and maybe a place to work on the car, the other purpose of a garage.

And so I found this video by YouTube channel GardenFork. Here he gives tips for decluttering your garage without really making anything TV worthy out of the final product. The thing about doing YouTube videos from home is the incentive to make it look like a good backdrop or set to film on and look professional. This is just a simple organizing and clutter removal operation, which is what I wanted. Despite turning my studio into something that looks good on camera as part of my projects, DIY on the cheap and easy decluttering to make the space functional for the intended purpose is currently the name of the game around here.

Let’s Watch Someone Declutter Their “Croffice”

Thanks to insomnia I didn’t have the drive to do any cleaning this week as I only have one day a week to declutter and organize. That’s part of the reason this is taking so long, but not the only one. With the next two weeks looking to be pretty hectic with doctor appointments Saturdays may actually be a quiet time while I’m still decluttering. It depends on the stuff I do for the other site and other things I need to be doing for myself. If I can finally get my sleep cycle under control I just might be able to put my living back together, if that sentence made any sense. If not, blame it on going to bed around 2AM and waking up at 12:30 PM.

However, I did want to give you readers something to look into. Part of posting my decluttering projects or doing a deep review to see if I want to keep this or that is putting thoughts in your head about your own journey. I know “minimalist” is the craze in decluttering but that may be too far for me, feeling sometimes like the opposite of “hoarder”. I am a collector, but getting myself to enjoy my collections by not having them too big or filled with stuff I’m not interested is part of the journey.

So is there the main focus of decluttering has been, my personal living space. This includes the room I’ve been trying to turn into a dedicated studio for my art and video projects. Technically it is but it’s still a mess, so maybe I can get some inspiration from the following video. From the YouTube channel ClutterBug comes this story from 2021, part of the lockdown years. The host is using technology we once thought would exist in science fiction to talk to a woman named Michelle through videophone. Michelle has a room similar to mine. Where I do article writing, comics and other art work, and the occasional video she wants to make a dedicated craft room/office combo, her “croffice”. However her place is around the same mess I was when I started, but thanks to the host and more time that I have to dedicate she finally gets to vacuum her floor. That will make more sense when you see the video.

Organizing The Hat Rack

Sorry, the window was brighter than I thought.

I like wearing hats when I go out. I just liked collecting a few as a kid and I’ve picked up a few more since, but I like wearing hats more as an adult than I did as a kid. I didn’t hate wearing them, I’m just more into wearing them when I’m out now. To keep them organized my mom opted not to just use a hat rack but picked up a pot and pan rack (I think that’s what that is) thinking it could hold more hats. It would if the hats weren’t falling all over each other. It’s kind of a mess and kind of a pain to get one hat without a bunch of them falling behind the couch, plus it doesn’t look very nice. This week’s project was to try to fix that a bit and find a different way to have the hats on there.

I had tested one way to get the hats on there and it seemed to be holding. So it was just a matter of doing it for all the hats…or at least the hats I could. By the time I was done, I also had a couple of donations and eliminations do I decluttered a bit as well. That’s a nice bonus.

Christmas Decorating Vs. Clutter

This is usually when I post this year’s Christmas decoration set-up before taking a Christmas break. As I write this the article is late by closing on five hours and the decorating isn’t done. I haven’t even taken any pictures because I’m just exhausted…and I wish that was the only issue.

When I do get it decorated, possibly some time tomorrow, you’ll see what I’ve arranged. As it turns out it won’t be as nice as previous years. The problem is that with all the sick time this year and this weird situation I’ve mentioned before where clearing one area led to clutter in another area has actually led to me losing access to one corner of my studio even though I’ve managed to open room in my bedroom. This is all my personal clutter as the house itself has gotten better, meaning my dad, who isn’t doing a regular weekly declutter project, is having more success than I am.

I’m hoping that in 2022 and possibly even somehow during these last weeks of 2021 I can get myself into a proper work and declutter pattern. I want to do more video content for my other site along with all the usual articles and weekly comic strip. I’m not even doing my annual Christmas superhero comic and I’m worried I won’t have the planned video review ready either. However, only so much can be blamed on how sick I’ve been this year since that doesn’t excuse the times I’ve been healthy, few as those days have been this year. After the surgery I could have done more smaller projects and I have to ask what happened when I could lift heavier things again.

I think I figured out the main reason I’m failing versus how good I was doing when I started this site. I don’t have a place for a bunch of this stuff. I don’t have a place for the photo stage my dad put together. I don’t have a place for the big lamp now that a small TV that belonged to my late uncle is sitting there…which is really why I have an inaccessible corner. What I really need is to better find a location for all this stuff and my emphasis for 2022 need to be removal over simply reorganizing. This is probably going to be the heaviest decision making but not being a hoarder is more than not adding to what’s there. I still need to better organize and that’s going to be a goal as well, but there are things I’m going to have to sell off or toss out and I have to accept that moving on.

As soon as I do have this year’s decorating done I’ll show you the picks, but I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and we’ll see you in 2021 while I start doing some thinking.

Quick Report: Some Random Projects

At best this report is “I did a few things”. Basically I only opted for a few smaller projects this week because it’s what I wanted to work on. While I’m strong enough physically to take on more intense projects again this week my brain just wasn’t in it. At least I…

• …cleaned up a small area of my bedroom which including throwing out a pair of shoes that I can’t wear anymore. The sides are out of shape so wearing them really wasn’t safe. Luckily I still have a pair of dress shoes and I’m thinking I bought them because the older shoes were out of shape but never had a chance to toss them and then forgot the whole thing. Don’t tell me you didn’t collect clutter the same way. I have a bit more room now and probably the best I can do without tossing stuff I actually need out. Like my bed. Not much of a bedroom without a bed.
• …reorganized my art space a bit. Again, just a corner of it and if it wasn’t for the third project this would be all about organizing corners. Not that it matters because I reorganize my art space every few months, or at least that’s how it feels like. I’m not even completely sure I maximized the area so in a few months I may be reporting on that project again. In fact I know I want to do some reorganizing with my various paper I use for writing and drawing once I go into one of the drawer organizing stages, which I hope to do soon if not next week.
• …started to add to my list of Saturday Night Showcase postings that I have in a spreadsheet. There are times I swear I used something for the feature on my other website where I promote fan and indie projects as well as the current official or licensed YouTube channels that have popped up. (I like to support the official release, but I haven’t done enough indie and fan works in a while. Maybe after Christmas I’ll go hunting.) I might have gotten further, though I don’t know if I would have finished, if not for WordPress going down during the whole thing and some other issues I was having on my end. I’m going to keep working on that so I can find things for my site. It’s still organizing so technically it still counts.

So I accomplished…most of what I wanted yesterday. It may not be much but the bedroom looks a bit clearer, I finally got rid of the unwearable (safely if you want to walk in them) shoes, and the stuff related to other projects. It’s still a victory and victories are what keep you working on a project. I just need to get back to making a few major victories now that I’m able to.

Organizing My Manuals

This week I started on an easy project to work my way back after all the medical issues…or at least I thought that was what would happen. The goal was to collect all my different instruction manuals from various equipment and organize them into one convenient location. They would be arranged so I could find the one I wanted easier. I kind of had that but they were all over the place between my bedroom and the studio. Therein was the problem. After searching every possibly place an electronic manual would be I was reminding that my body had recovered from all the nonsense but my stamina, which was already an issue before the hernia removal, still required building back up. I had to take a nap and it turned out only three locations had the manuals I was looking for. Figures.

I have a lot of stuff scattered in different locations for different reasons. I think I may focus on that for a while instead of the visual clutter, and maybe some of the latter will work itself out as a by-product. This week though this was what I accomplished.

Reorganizing The Bumblebee Shelf

My latest addition and the review I did last week highlighted a problem with the infamous Bumblebee Shelf beyond not having the paint I want to redecorate it. I’m running out of space for it and it’s not a very exciting display. They’re just standing there like their having their driver’s license photo taken and I’m not sure you need a driver’s license when you are the car. This week, as I have the okay to start doing more I wanted to dust off and reorganize my Bumblebees to make room and to have a little bit of life to it…at least the ones with any decent form of articulation.

And yes, Scooter of the GoBots is there as well. I didn’t have anywhere else to put him as he kept falling over on my computer desk and I like to pretend Scooter and Bumblebee are best buddies. In this space the Autobots and Guardians get along.

So take a trip with me through the Bumblebees, including the ones I haven’t reviewed on this site before.