Small Scales

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I'm sitting here in my bathrobe fighting off allergy attacks -- as when it's warm and pretty, until I get used to it, my allergies go nuts. I've taken Mucinex as of right now to see if that helps, but if it doesn't I'll move on to the generic Zyrtec I take when they get really bad. I can't help it, really, other than staying medicated when I need to be.

While I don't have a lot of school-related work to do this weekend (in fact, I have little to none) I do have a lot of around-the-house work to do. I also probably need to go shopping tonight in the overnight hours if I'm still awake -- I have some necessities I need to pick up for myself and the cats. Yesterday consisted mostly of laundry, cleaning, and packing up some non-essentials. I was able to find some boxes I'd put in storage, about five or six, that will be useful for boxing up some more stuff around the house. I also cleaned out the bottom of my closet in my Man Cave, which involved going through a lot of my "around the house clothes" to decide what I'm donating to charity and what I'm not. The first charity bag (a big, Hefty Steel-Sac bag) is about halfway full right now, and I haven't even switched out my wardrobes yet -- where the real "paring down" of my clothing will begin. I'd like to get about 90% of the clothing I have put away in three or four boxes, and the rest donated to charity. It is, obviously, going to require me to get rid of a lot of stuff I love, but no longer wear that often or have any use for. I'd donate my massive grey trenchcoat to charity, for example -- even though it cost about $130 fifteen years ago -- but Daisy loves it and wants to wear it. I have a few other jackets and the like that will be donated, a lot of my old pants, a ton of older shirts, etc.

I don't know what to do with my massive, beloved leather motorcycle jacket. It weighs eight pounds and I can only wear it when it's really cold outside, but I don't think I've worn it more than ten times in the past five years, and Daisy's vegan -- which means she doesn't approve of leather anyway. I don't know anyone who's my size who would actually take it and wear it, though, and if anyone were to look for the same jacket in a leather biker shop, it would be like $400 (I bought it on Amazon in 2010 or so for about $60, getting a fantastic fucking deal on it). As little as I wear it, I'm not sure I could give it to charity without serious regrets a year or two from now. I'm going to have a lot of regrets like that when I gut this place, I gather.

Oh well, though -- starting a new life and all that.

I did find several boxes that would work well for yard sale boxes on May 3, if I plan to do the city-wide garage sale thing -- which, given what I have and what I need to get rid of, I probably should and will. I have a little over a month to prepare for that, so that's good, right? If nothing else, people will probably pay a good amount of money for the DVDs I'd like to get rid of, and some of the excess furniture and bigger/bulkier items I never use (like the barbecue grill) I'll mark as "free" so that people just take them and haul them away. Some of the stuff I really don't want, I want to mark as "I'll pay you $5 to take this thing away," but I probably won't.

My afternoon and evening will be spent doing things around the house on a small scale, one by one, taking care of tasks. The first will be the wardrobe switch, then vacuuming, then packing another box or three if possible, then spending many hours applying for jobs. This is a good plan. I like this plan. I can only really do one thing at a time, after all, and metering out time for each task, making a list, putting it in order for what I need to do helps calm my nerves and soothes me much more than just talking about it over and over.