Doomsday

 

What will you do when the lights go off? Are you prepared?

Browsing Facebook this morning, I was overwhelmed by ads for disaster preparedness trying to sell stuff to deal with an emergency – specifically a blackout. Some useful products but lots of hype.

Global warming has created some unusual weather patterns causing floods and droughts and fires. Lakes and rivers are drying up all around the world. Intense storms can and have caused widespread and prolonged power outages.

There are some who say that Iran has both the will and means to destroy the US infrastructure starting with our power grids.

Many companies have developed and are aggressively advertising devices to help in a dire emergency.

There are small solar power kits sized from hand-held to small suitcase sizes. Tons of them.

And then there are the water purifiers that all claim to produce 99.9999% pure, clean water from the foulest rivers and lakes. Tons of them, too.

There are other kinds of disaster preparedness products, but these dominate the posts. If you decide to get one of these, use a high degree of due diligence in making your choice.  There must be some duds among the gems.

I know that these products are useful when dire circumstances arrive, but I am put off by the doomsday fear mongering. Reminds me of the nuclear war scares in the1950’s.

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More Sticker Shock

 

Part of today’s decluttering meant going through all the paperwork for our boat, SeaFox a Saga 43 sloop.  HOLY COW!!!

Our first boat, the test case, was a new Catalina 25 foot sloop. The idea was to learn to sail and to figure out If we thought we could live on a boat. In addition to the sale price, we knew up front what we’d have to pay to have it rigged and launched in a local lake. Then our dreams got much bigger.

In 2004 we bought a used boat that had seen a lot of sailing,  SeaFox was gorgeous. Still makes my heart go pitty-pat when I see photos of her. There was the purchase price, of course, and having a pre-purchase survey done.

Then came the rest of the cost. A couple of necessary repairs followed by upgrades.  The dollars flowed out but not all at once. One by one the improvements were made.  We put Cherrywood bookshelves in the spot where the TV had been.  Upgraded some of the instrumentation. Got a custom-made cockpit enclosure. Dinghy davits. Wind generator. And a couple more things. We did this over a period of almost two years, and one at a time, the expenses were ok and we loved the improvements. I’m so glad that I did not keep a running total of what we were spending at the time.

It was all worth it. Our time cruising was wonderful. But I was a bit surprised to realize how much it all cost. I’m glad we were able to do it. I wouldn’t change a thing.

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All that glitters ......

I spent the last few days reviewing the CDs mentioned in my “Buried Treasure” post.  Some of them contained gems but there were some rocks among the gems. A couple of discs must have been warped because the drive wouldn’t accept them.

Vacation photos from 24 years ago had lost their meaning. We always took far too many pics of scenery. How many photos do you need of the same mountain?!  There were lots of pics of mountains, hills, lakes and rivers from various places. I remember the locations of only a few of them.

A few had file formats that couldn’t be read because I don’t have the right software anymore. I loved playing with software that could add special effects to pics. I used PC Paint and Corel Draw. These are still available in some form, but I’m not sure that it is worth the cost to buy them. Maybe one day I’ll get the urge to do that again.

A future project is to go over them again and select some photos to separate out and save.

Mary & Neal 1994

Four Generations 1996

Artsy Fartsy

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Buried Treasure

 

Yesterday I attacked a stack of stuff that I hadn’t looked at it years. Over time, it became the default place for things I didn’t know what to do with, or was postponing doing something with. The stack grew slowly but steadily.

About 1/3 of the way down the stack I uncovered treasures that I’d been seeking for many weeks.  There was a ziplock bag holding photos and memorabilia that I’d pretty much forgotten about.

And two white binders…

One binder contained old family photos that I’d been searching for. Several years ago I’d used some of them for a YouTube video about my paternal ancestors, but had no idea where they were now.

It also held my WWII ration books from when I was a baby. 

The other binder was full of CDs holding old photos and data. 

The photos go as far back as 1994 or maybe farther. Most are from the early 2000’s

Other projects are on hold while I travel down memory lane with these CDs. This should be interesting.

 

Decisions, Decisions

 Decluttering isn’t always as simple as “If you don’t love it, let it go”.

What about things that are still useful? The next question is “Will I use it in the future?" There are 3 possible answers:

·      No: get rid of it.

·      Yes: Keep it

·      Maybe: Now there are more things to consider:

o   Sentimental value?

o   Will it likely ever be used? Really??

There are some things that I’m truly ready to toss. The things to keep are pretty obvious. But there are some useful things that I love but haven’t used for years; I have trouble tossing obsolete electronic devices that were once used and loved.

And some of the “maybe”s  have a purely sentimental grip on me. It is difficult to discard the things that bring back pleasant memories.The process slows down when I uncover something that once was significant because I always need to take time with it before I can dispose of it.

This process will go on for a while, but I have nothing but time.

 

Did I fizzle out?

 

 

Today I came across some binders that had been stored for a few years. They reminded me that I once was energetic. In a mental sense. 

They contain notes and goals for several Youtube projects I did. I was pretty well organized. I even had a bullet journal that I kept up. I had design plans and narration scripts. Then I didn’t do any more. Why?  Was I burned out from the effort?  Did I run out of ideas? Did I just lose interest? I did think of more projects and even started a couple of them but never followed up after making a few steps.

I hope that I’ll get inspired by looking at my past work. I hope that I’ll be able to pick up where I left off on the couple projects that I barely started. I need to get the juices flowing again.  I’ve been mentally sedentary for too long.

A De-cluttering Milestone

 

Some milestones are smaller than others.

I had gone through the pantry and removed the things I am unlikely to use – much of it was for Neal only. It’s all been sitting on the dining table for weeks now because I cannot carry heavy things down the stairs and no local food pantry has anyone who can pick it up. I was stuck for a solution.

There was also a collection of stuff that I wanted to get rid of. Today a junk removal guy came to get the stuff.

The great news is that he also took the food items and will see that they get to a food bank.

I regained some floor space and table-top real estate. HOOORAY!!!