Downsizing

Carpets and Couches

2011-07-18T06:10:00.000-07:00

I have not kept up with my writing, obviously...

I'm thinking about replacing the carpet, which is getting old and disgusting. I'm convinced that carpet is evil. Think of all the stuff that must be hiding in there. Skins cells (our's and the dogs'), fur, mountains of dust (how do you dust carpet?), crumbs from about 10,000 meals and snacks (now rotting in the shag), the occasional dog barf, poop, and pee residue (no matter how many chemicals you use, do you really ever get it all out?), mold, and who knows what else? Even if you run the vacuum cleaner regularly (which we don't), you're basically sucking up the loosest stuff, filtering out the harmless big particles and launching the harmful small ones right back into the air to eventually settle back down into...the carpet. I'm going to go for some easy-to-clean wood-looking laminate. So check back for updates on that.

I want to get rid of our couch. It's old and saggy. My posture is bad enough without cushions that are basically cloth bags 1/2 full of stuffing. I'd like to replace our couch with 2 recliners. I love to recline rather than sit while I'm watching TV or on the computer. I've even considered making or buying a stand with swiveling trays that we could put right next to the recliners so we could keep our laptops there and swivel them out of the way when we need to sit down or get up.

The tough thing for me is how to prioritize. I want new flooring, new recliners (could be used, but new to me), and stuff like that, but how to juggle that with paying off debt?

Love Responsibly

2011-06-17T03:32:00.000-07:00

After being through divorce, and lately seeing a good friend going through it, I've been thinking a bit about how relationships work...or don't work.

I think that when a person says "I'm in love with you," what they should usually be more accurately saying is "I'm in lust with you." I've heard through several TV programs and news broadcasts that the in-love feeling is a chemical overdose in the brain that lasts for perhaps months to a few years. The purpose of this behavior of the brain has purely evolutionary roots...to get the species to propagate and continue the life cycle. That has, obviously, worked out quite well for millions of years for every species on Earth. I'm not sure it's serving humankind so well anymore. The in-love experience is certainly a chemically-induced hallucination, and it's high-time humanity learned to cope responsibly with it.

I remember seeing some movies set in Victorian days when husbands and wives slept in separate bedrooms. I remember thinking how strange it was that they isolated themselves from each other. I don't think it's so strange now. In fact, I think more people should try it.

I know first hand that when people fall "in love" (in lust) that they desire to spend as much time as they can with each other. This is certainly smothering both people, even if they don't realize it. They give up large portions of their lives that are enjoyable for them, that are a large part of what makes them who they are.

My friend recently told his wife he wanted a divorce. Now, just 2 weeks later, they are better friends than they ever were. For years they struggled with conflicting expectations of each other and their relationship, trying to come to agreement on how they should act, time they should spend together and how to spend it. Now with the pressure to "be a couple" gone, they are both free to be themselves, which is their most natural, happy state. This couple has 2 small children, a 4 year old daughter and a 2 year old son and a third on the way. My friend reports that he has noticed an immediate improvement in the quality of both his and his wife's parenting and their relationships with the children. My friend is now living with his mom and her husband, and none of them could be happier. He goes to his house to spend time with the kids whenever he wants. He and his wife cooperate and coordinate schedules to get the children to whatever activities or appointments they have. He reports that his wife, who is by nature shy and reserved, is already more outgoing, spends more time with old friends, and is loving it.

I don't know how he managed it when so many couples seem to go from lovers to haters at break-up time. Somehow, those two special individuals found a way to find their friendship, which was lost for the past five years, sacrificed to their marriage.

Shoddy Plumbing Sucks

2011-01-01T17:50:00.000-08:00

I was trying to do something nice for my fiancée. She had a crummy faucet in the master bathroom. It was one of those with two knobs; one for hot, one for cold. I decided to swap it out while she was at work and I was home for Christmas vacation.

[side rant]

Two-knob faucets are good examples of bad design. Manufacturers should cease fabrication of the two-knob faucets. When you want to wash your hands or dunk your head in the sink, you either get frozen or scalded. Who on Earth wants to sit there monkeying with two knobs trying to figure out the correct ratio of hot and cold that will deliver both the correct temperature AND pressure? Unless you sit there fussing with it for five minutes, you settle for water that is too hot, too cold, comes out too fast, comes out too slow, or some combination of that. The single lever faucet is far superior. Left and right for the correct temperature, up and down for the correct pressure. Simple. And they are much easier to clean; you don't have to try to get a sponge or rag around the bases of those knobs, which no human fingers have evolved to fit into.

[/side rant]

I went to disconnect the lines from the faucet from the pipes that come out of the wall, and *snap*, the CPVC pipe snapped off at an elbow inside the wall. I ran to the supply closet and shut off the water to the apartment, but the CPVC valve started leaking. I stuck a bucket under that and went back to the bathroom. Repairing the snapped pipe was certainly going to involve breaking through the back of the sink cabinet, chopping out the broken bit of pipe, and replacing it. I get myself a little hand saw and cut a patch out of the cabinet. I then realized that whoever installed the sink cabinet cut the hole for the pipe in the wrong position. Instead of widening the hole so the pipe fit through properly, the installer just bent the pipe up and forced it through the hole. So the elbow that snapped had been under torque for the past 20 years until I grabbed hold of it to remove the water line. Worse yet, I saw that water was still trickling out of the broken pipe. I thought that maybe there was pressure still in the lines, so I opened all the other faucets in the apartment. The pipe still trickled water. I called a plumber. I think I could ultimately have fixed it myself, but at this point I was so stressed about the damage I must have done to our downstairs neighbors' apartment that I didn't dare risk making the problem any worse. I had to find out where to shut off the water supply to the entire building so that the plumber could fix the leaky valve in the supply closet, because he couldn't fix the bathroom pipe with water still drooling out. Then, when the plumber looked into the wall and saw the piping was CPVC, he said that usually they only plumb houses with CPVC when the builder is afraid copper pipes will get ripped out and stolen. We live in a pretty nice neighborhood here, which means the builder was just cutting corners to pad his profits. Then the plumber said that the joints and elbows were fit so closely, there was no room to cut between them. That necessitated another hole in the wall so that he could get to a place where there was a length of pipe that he could work from. Then he found that the hot and cold water pipes were so close together that he had a difficult time cutting the damaged pipe because the other was in the way.

Things eventually got put back together so that nothing else is leaking. Our downstairs neighbors' bathroom ceiling caved in from the water, their bathroom vanity was ruined, and their hardwood floor was damaged.

To the person who built this place, I say: May the fleas of a thousand cattle nest in your nethers, you limey bastard.

New shelf

2011-01-01T17:32:00.000-08:00

I installed a 6' shelf in the kitchen. My fiancée's biggest hobby is cookie decorating. This hobby necessitates boxes and boxes of cookie cutters, sprinkles, candy eyes, food coloring, squeeze bottles, etc. They were taking up the glass-top table you see here in front of the window, the floor beneath the table, and 2/3 of a pantry shelf. We've reclaimed that space, and if the mood strikes us, we can enjoy tea or cereal in our breakfast nook.

Next is to find some tidier boxes to put all the stuff in so she can find what she wants when she wants it, and so that it doesn't look so sloppy.

This project wasn't about downsizing so much as reclaiming space we had lost to Stuff. The object was not to get rid of stuff that brings her joy, but to get it out of the way when she's not using it.

Mugs and Glasses, Part 3

2010-10-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

We ended up taking all the remedies out of the cabinet entirely. We don't use them enough to even keep them there, so I put them in a plastic bin and moved them out of the kitchen. Now only a half of the bottom shelf holds the vitamins, and the rest of the cabinet holds mugs and glasses, like it should... Clearly, it took some time to settle on a system that works for us. That's ok. Try something. If it doesn't work, try something else. Repeat until you find something that does. As long as you pay little or no money for it, who cares? It's not like there's a time limit...

Mugs and Glasses, Part 2

2010-09-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

I've finally sorted through the vitamins and remedies shelves. I cleared out about 20 old prescription bottles from 2003-2007. Then I put the remedies (headache medicine, cold/flu medicine, allergy medicine, upset stomach medicine...blah blah blah) on the bottom shelf where it will be easier to reach and see what we're looking for. The second shelf now is all the vitamins. Since we only need to get to those once a week, when we fill up our pill containers, and we always reach for the same bottles, I don't think it will be a hassle.

Now I can space out some of the other glasses, which used to all be crammed together on the right half of the 3rd shelf up. Wine glasses on the left, drinking glasses on the right.

Kitchen Drawer

2010-09-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

One drawer in our kitchen was jam-packed with stuff. Any time we wanted a spatula or a wooden spoon, we had to dig through countless other things to find it. So I emptied the drawer out completely, sorted through it, and separated the items that we have used in the last month from the ones we have not. The ones we've used went back into the drawer, and the rest went into a box of unneeded kitchen stuff that is in the spare room.

Yes, more and more stuff is working it's way into the spare room. But a) it is more convenient there than it was when it was strewn about the house, and b) at least it puts more of the clutter in one place where I can see it, sort it, and deal with it.

Here are the before and after pictures.

On Efficiency

2010-08-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

My job, the one I get paid to do, is all about creating faster, leaner, less wasteful production methods for LCDs. I spend my days figuring out how to clip five more seconds off of a process tact time and how to squeeze another 25 units per day out of a process without adding to operator hours or requiring overtime. I figure out how to do a process or make a product with less scrap material and less wasted time. I try to simplify production so that we can keep more people employed here in the USA instead of shipping the work to China to save costs and stay competitive. My job is important because time = money.

I've been applying the same logic to my home life lately, even though I don't get paid money for it. I've been considering that chores like vacuuming, washing dishes and clothes, cleaning, picking up clutter, etc., are all things that take time away from doing the things I actually like to do. So anything I can do to maximize the amount of time I have to do what I want will improve my quality of life. Even the two minutes I spend moving papers and clutter from the dining room table so that I can sit and eat are two extra minutes I could have spent sitting and eating and talking with my sweetheart, but were lost. If I do this every day for a month, I've lost an hour of my life. If I do this every day for two years, I've lost a day of my life. Wouldn't it be terrible if when I'm on my death bed I remember all the minutes that add up to years of my life wasted on managing Stuff that doesn't matter?

One of the key concepts of lean manufacturing is to put exactly the right tool exactly where it is needed. I've been applying this to my home life. For example, one habit that my girlfriend and I have is that we kick off our shoes as soon as we step inside the front door. Over the span of a week, that means there are eight or ten pairs of shoes heaped up near the front door. The correct place for the shoes was in the bedroom, but it was not convenient to hike the shoes from the front door to the bedroom again and again. So why not acknowledge that the front door IS the correct place to put shoes, and then provide a convenient space for them there? We now store our shoes on a hang-on-the-door shoe holder (like this one) inside the coat closet, which is right next to the front door. Now, shoes we kick off when we come home are never far from their proper place, and cleaning them up is not a hassle.

Another key concept of lean manufacturing is to get tools that are not used often out of the way of the tools that are. My girlfriend's CDs and DVDs used to be in the living room next to the entertainment center. However, she only listens to CDs occasionally. The rest of the time, the four towers full of CDs were just sitting there taking up space. Also, we only watch the few movies we own once in a while. In fact, we probably should just sell them or give them away. How many times can we really watch the same movie in our lives? So, now the DVDs and CDs are in the extra bedroom out of the way. We can still get at them whenever we want them, but now the space we actually live in is less hogged up by stuff we only use once-in-a-while. I had a binder full of CDs that took up space for years. I finally ripped them all to iTunes and chucked the binder, CDs and all, into the dumpster.

Leash, Mail, and Slushy Shoes

2010-08-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite ready to take on the arranging of the vitamins and remedies cabinet yet. So next I'm going to turn my attention to the little table just inside the front door. It's a small thing, but it is a constant region of clutter. I think the need for the surface inside the front door is simple: it should be a surface to (temporarily) set mail, purse, grocery bag, etc. while we take off our shoes and coats when we come inside.

Currently we have a bin for holding the dog leash on top. The mail, junkmail and all, sits on the top and inevitably falls off because the surface isn't big enough. Also sitting on top is a stack of CDs that don't even belong to us. We think maybe they belong to my girlfriend's sister, but in any case, it seems silly to store other people's garbage there. The little shelf below is too small to hold much, but we've been using it to hold coupons that we might want to grab when we go out the door. There's probably a better way to hold them, or a better place.

If we prefer to put the leash in the bin instead of just hanging it on the wall somewhere nearby, then we probably need a bigger surface there, because the bin plus the mail is just too much for that tiny surface. If my girlfriend allows, I will replace the stand that is there with a built-in shelf to put leash and mail on. I will see about finding a plastic tray to put beneath the shelf in the winter so that when we come in with slush and salt all over our shoes/boots, we can kick them off onto the tray instead of letting the slush and salt soak into the carpet.

Entertainment, Part 2

2010-08-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

After my flurry of activity last night, here is what our entertainment area looks like now. The old entertainment center was hiding lots of junk in the drawers and cabinet.

We are now using all 9 speakers. The 2 large ones on the left and right were just being used to hold up the rear right and left surround speakers because my girlfriend thought they didn't work. Turns out they do. I moved out the DVD player and CD changer, as I proposed. I got a used PS2 wireless controller so we don't need to have the cords stretched across the room to play the PS2 or watch a DVD. I do not have a way to pipe iTunes through the receiver yet, but I've got a lead on an AirPort Express on Craigslist.

I have packed up the games and DVDs and moved them with the four towers of CDs to the spare bedroom for storage. We will get them out one at a time as needed, and hopefully manage to put them back as soon as we are finished with them. The excess wires and cables were all put in a "spare parts" box. My girlfriend had a little bin that now holds PS2 and Wii accessories. You can see it on the table to the left of the TV, above the Wii and PS2.

As a side note; moving the left and right speakers farther away from the TV made a dramatic improvement in the "surround" sound. The action really seems to move from side to side during movies and video games.

Doom and Gloom

2010-08-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

I fear for the future. I think we humans will be forced to get used to living with less, and quickly. I think the future of the global economy is gloomy. I fear the gulf between the have's and the have-not's is getting wider. I fear that jobs here in the USA and probably in Europe are evaporating because most of the wealth-creating endeavors are cheaper elsewhere. I think this will make survival more difficult. Even our state and local governments are going bankrupt, which means that all kinds of social services will be cut back. Teachers, policemen, firemen, and lots of other government jobs will be lost, forcing people to be more self-sufficient for their schooling, safety, retirement, health...

I see people spend money on a vast variety of essentially useless Stuff and I worry that in a few years those people may well be losing their jobs and they'll wish they had that cash that they are now throwing away on Stuff. Stuff is a shackle. When we get it, we have to spend money to store it. Often we have to spend money to use it. When we move, we have to spend money to take it with us. When we walk, we have to walk around it, or step over it. When we reach for our Stuff, we have to move our other Stuff out of the way to get it. We pack our Stuff away in boxes to make room for more Stuff which we will inevitably pack in more boxes... As a simple example, take a music CD. I pay money to own it. I need to buy a CD player to use it. I have to box it and take it with me if I move. If I leave it on the floor or coffee table, I have to move it or move around it or step over it. If I want to play a different CD, I have to move it out of the way to get the CD I want. Eventually, the CD will go out of style, and I will pack it away in a flurry of organizational chaos, and stick it in a closet or basement. Then, a few years later, the CD I wanted so badly when I saw it in the store ends up in a landfill. The same is true for clothes, decorations, jewelry, toys, tech gadgets...just about everything.

I imagine that every physical possession I have were to burn up in a fire and I ask myself, "What Stuff would I miss?" At this moment, I'm happy to say that I wouldn't miss a thing. I might be mildly inconvenienced, but I've reached a blissful state of not "needing" anything. I wish this kind of freedom and peace of mind for everyone. I think that most of the things to which we attach sentimental value don't deserve such attachment.

I recommend that people invest in themselves and in goodwill, rather than in Stuff. Spend your hard-earned dollars on your retirement fund, or on a home-cooked meal with your neighbor.

Entertainment

2010-08-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

The goal:

To downsize the "entertainment" area of our living room. Reduce the quantity of electronic devices needed to play music, movies, TV, etc. Make arranging, organizing, and cleaning the entertainment area easier. Maintain the ability to control all remaining electronic equipment from the couch. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

The challenge:

Our entertainment center currently consists of: large cabinet, TV, 9 speakers, receiver, DVR, DVD player, 5-disc CD player/changer, PS2, Wii, DVDs, games, CDs, multitude of cables/cords/wires. (See photo.)

Proposed solution:

1. Get rid of the cabinet. Put all electronic equipment on 2 end-tables that my girlfriend got from her grandfather. This should make accessing the rear of the electronic components easy for plugging, unplugging, arranging, etc. Also, it takes away the convenience of stacking junk on top of the cabinet, which creates clutter.

2. Get rid of the DVD player. It barely works, and it makes me want to pull my hair out. Also, I found out yesterday that the PS2 plays DVDs.... Maybe buy a wireless PS2 game controller so that we don't have to stretch a controller cord from the PS2 to the couch.

3. Get rid of the 5-disc CD changer. Whenever my girlfriend or I want to play music, rip the disc to iTunes and find a way to wirelessly send music from the computer to the receiver. I'm considering the Apple AirPort Express.

4. Stack the DVR on the receiver. Stack the Wii and PS2 on the DVR. Use twisties and rubber bands to gather up all the excess wires and cables so that they are a more convenient length.

5. Pack away all CDs and DVDs in a closet or spare room to de-clutter the living room. Get music CDs out of storage only long enough to rip it to iTunes. Get a movie out only when we want to watch it.

Rotating Furniture

2010-08-14T18:27:00.000-07:00

We gave our crappy dining room table to Goodwill today. We also borrowed out an old rickety chest of drawers to a friend, and put an odd cabinet we got from her grandfather in storage. We had delivered to us a dining room table and seven chairs that her father hadn't been using for a while. So, while we got rid of some cumbersome stuff, we picked up a bit of stuff, too. We did not give away the four dining room chairs we previously had, so now we have eleven (!) dining room chairs. I have no idea what we will do with them all. The new table and chairs look much better, and tonight she remarked that our dining room looked much more like a home now, so that's good. But we'll certainly end up with at least four chairs in the second bedroom, which I've been trying to clear out bit by bit. You win some, you lose some.

I love the feeling I get looking at an empty table. I think I associate stuff on a table (whatever the stuff is) with clutter and stress.

Mugs and glasses

2010-08-05T19:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight, when my girlfriend and I were emptying the dishwasher and putting away the glasses and mugs, I asked my girlfriend if I could help her downsize a few. She had one shelf of the cabinet stuffed with mugs and another two stuffed with glasses. There are only two of us living here (plus a third who looks vaguely like a dog from certain angles), so I couldn't see a real need for 20 coffee mugs and another 20 drinking cups and glasses. She did manage to toss out four mugs (that she used to soak the small fuzzy human's "bones") and allowed me to put another seven on a top shelf, out of the way. I also put about eight of her less-favorite drinking cups on the top shelf. Now, one shelf (barely) fits the all of the mugs, and another fits the plastic drinking cups, and a third fits the glasses and wine glasses. The top shelf holds the overflow. Here's the photo of how it looks now. The second shelf is missing some of the drinking cups because they were in use, so if they were all in there, the second shelf would be fuller. You'll notice that all of our vitamins and remedies are on the left half of the cabinet. Arranging those will be my next task...

Beginning

2010-08-04T17:52:00.000-07:00

My brother recommended Leo Baubuta's blog to me a week ago, mnmlist.com, and I feel I've found a kindred spirit. It is a huge relief to know there are others out there who want to boil life down to what's really important, and bag the rest. I'm more inspired than ever to purge the chaff, so that I can spend more of my life with the things and people I love.

In late 2008, I set a goal to rid myself of possessions until I could fit everything I owned into my car, a 1998 Hyundai Tiburon.

Today, I might have reached my goal. I can't be sure because I haven't actually tried to fit everything I own now in my car. But I must be getting close.