Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Cleaning Sabbatical - Day Six

A lot more progress in the basement, but if I only did 1/3 Tuesday, I don' t know how I thought I could make up the other 2/3 on Wednesday.

I should drop it. Be satisfied with what I've done, and either give myself a day of rest or see what I can do on the unfinished side of the basement. But the work I've done these past two days feels less like cleaning and more like reclaiming an extra room in the house, so I'm going to keep plugging away.

Today I moved out of my way all the books and media that yesterday we decided to get rid of. (Most of it is packed into my car, or lining the stairs up to the main floor awaiting transport). That cleared off the new bookcase. I assembled the second bookcase, and moved them both into a corner beneath the stairs, where they currently hold the VHS collection, now ready for a deep weeding.

I cleaned out the antique post office desk that I inherited from my grandmother, and I sorted and stored my yarn stash. (Enough with the sock yarn, Donald).

My biggest accomplishment of the day was dealing with the remains of Mike's last job: adjunct writing instructor for Capital University. When he was unceremoniously booted from his position, he cleared out his office spaces and dropped it all in a corner of the basement. It was terribly painful for him, so I understood why he packed quickly and couldn't face sorting through it. I tossed the trash, consolidated the office supplies (none stolen; all purchased by Mike), and organized the rest for Mike's easy judgment.

That freed up some wall-adjacent floor space, so I shifted bookcases into a better arrangement, filled them with stuff, and reorganized our game shelves. Counting various Trivial Pursuit supplements, we have 47 games, including 7 types of "Scene It." Next month's Game Night is at our house; I'm excited that, for the first time ever, I can let guests into the basement to see the full game collection.

1 comment:

Michael said...

As the person who was "unceremoniously booted" from his teaching position at Capital, I need to add a footnote. For my entire time there (5 or 6 years, I think), I signed one-year full-time contracts, knowing that any year, my position could be cut back to part-time, based on budget cuts and enrollment.

In the fall of 2004, that's what happened. I was urged to stay on part-time, but I would have lost my benefits and I would have had to piece together a living teaching at 2 or 3 different institutions, and I just felt too old for that. So to be fair to Capital, my leaving was indeed unceremonious, but not what I think of as a "booting."