Re-Organizing The Christmas Decorations

Well, it’s the beginning of the new year. That means the Christmas decorations are coming down and the studio will be back to normal (or what passes for it). This year I thought I’d revisit the organizing of the decorations. I think I talked about it before, the image above coming from a previous article, but new people come along storing their old decorations so why not look at some new techniques involving the process?

This is the blue box where I store my decorations. Usually I put the stuff in the smaller boxes that they’ll fit in and call it a year. Some boxes were dedicated to a particular set of decorations but not really officially, meaning I didn’t always remember where they go. This year I opted to bring Operation: A Place For Everything into my decoration organization. (Hey, that rhymes!) I also made sure that this year I actually remembered to put everything away, as a couple of items skipped out and I had to place them somewhere else rather than having to dig the thing out for two items. This year they all (looks around room) are put away. Here’s some things I decided to try this year to make it easier to find what I want next year.

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Cleaning The Under Art Desk Shelf

This fell slightly short of being a “quick project”. So I had trouble sleeping Friday night…again, but this time I was able to actually get some organizing done that I wanted to do last week. This is a shelf on the bottom of my art desk. As a former computer desk I guess this was an option for where the computer could go…provided you could turn it on and off with your toe? I don’t remember how I had the computer on this one though I don’t remember getting on the floor any time I wanted to load a disk or CD. Anyway it became a junk shelf until it was blocked by two big piles of comics. Since I was finally able to move those it was time to go after this.

It wasn’t a hard project and only took a few hours, though there are parts I need to still do, possibly next week and hopefully with a bit more sleep, but I got the important part done and that works for me. Let’s go over what I did, because otherwise this isn’t much of a report.

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.

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.

Quick Report: Some Minor Cleaning Up

Not a big report this week. I didn’t tackle some major mess or reorganize a disaster location, and I didn’t get to review anything, although at the current rate I should have a book review in the next two weeks. Instead I just did some minor clean-up:

• Now that the weather has decided to pick a season I was able to put away my thermal blanket until next winter.
• I went through some remaining convention promotional material for websites that I found among the stuff I was organizing last week. Part of it was curiosity because I don’t have time to take on yet another podcast or regularly visit a site that hasn’t been updated in a few years. I mostly wanted to see if any of them still existed and a few of them didn’t. I don’t think I added anything to my regular web reading.
• Put a small pillow away and cleaned up the pinball table.
• Also put away a few things I had lying around and for some reason didn’t get to.

These are all minor projects but while it clear out a ton of room it did make the place look better, which was the goal. Not every project has to be a huge megaproject. Sometimes it’s the smaller projects that have the greatest positive impact. In this case it’s not a huge impact but still a good one.

Quick Report: Bed Sheets & Selling Stuff

Remember a few weeks ago when I got a new (barely used) bed from my cousin? Well, it came with two pairs of sheets. I already owned three (though hers were a bit higher quality) so this week I had to try to fit four of them into the bed sheet drawer. (For those of you keeping count, the fifth is obviously on my bed.) A minor project but given that last week I was too tired to do anything it’s at least something.

I also finally updated the Toys For Sale page with the rest of the Transformers I want to sell off. I was going to add the books but I forgot where I put them, so until I find them that will have to wait. So apologies for not having a report last week (I’m getting tired of making posts saying how I didn’t do anything because I was either sick or busy) and hopefully next week I’ll have something more interesting to report on.

My Friend The Spreadsheet

Regular comics are great and all, but I do enjoy those promotional mini-comics. I have an article series on my other site that is all about reviewing them, and ones I physically own can be cross-posted to this site if I need it. They’re probably the only part of my comics library that is properly organized. However, they weren’t properly cataloged, and I need to know which mini-comics I own, what I’m looking for, and what I’ve written reviews on, whether I own the actual mini-comic or a scan off of the internet

That’s what I decided to do for this week’s project, to create a spreadsheet to catalog my mini-comics and what I’ve reviewed already. This may seem boring, and we aren’t talking about high impact EXTREME excitement here, but it’s a good way to demonstrate how that unused spreadsheet program in your computer or tablet can benefit a large organizing project like the one I’m doing.

Dusting Day

All together now!

Technically another quick project. After last week’s review of Alternity Bumblebee I went to prep the Bumblebee Shelf (I still really want to paint this thing yellow with some black trim) and noticed it was rather dusty. So this week I dusted it prior to resetting the Shelf to bring in the new Bumblebee. (This is an old picture. He’s not there.) And since I dusted that I thought I would dust my whole bedroom, because it needed it. It’s sad how much dust was on the Zoids alone. I think I did dust since last year’s hospital stays but it still built up. I also know I dusted in the studio during an earlier organizing project but it could use a light dusting as well.

It also reminds me how badly I need to go through my old Transformers, since I have so many stacked in boxes that (a) I can’t reach part of my non-Bumblebee shelves and get to stuff even to dust them, and (b) what’s the sense of collecting things if they’re going to stay in a plastic tub where nobody will see them because the spot you’d set them up to pose is cluttered but you can’t do anything about it? Even the Bumblebee Shelf is starting to get crowded and there are a few Bumblebees I’d still like to get, like Masterpiece and something representing the current incarnation of Robots In Disguise. Plus there’s a version for Titans Return that looks pretty cool and they didn’t make him a “Titanmaster” (formerly Headmaster, of which not every character has to be–no love for Targetmasters?) which makes him even better for this line.

I did manage to sell off my Marvel Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comics and learned a few things about PayPal, like there are fees, as well as double-checking the price of comics. They could go for a lot more than I sold them for, but there were various reasons why I took the hit and I’m not sorry. Unless he ends up selling them himself, but it’s still a lesson learned when it comes to my other comics to not just look at price guide sites and see what they’re actually going for. An important lesson although with my luck the other comics I’m getting rid of won’t be worth as much as those. I have that kind of luck.

“I Can’t Find My Shirt!”

That’s what happened this week. Actually, I want to find a dark-colored short-sleeved shirt for my Dad, who was attending a wake earlier this week. But I had shirts all in the wrong spot, another victim of my state of mind this year, being too sick, in pain, or weak to really care where anything went. So this week’s project was to get this into a better shape.