Project #2: Organizing the attic storeroom & moving on from another life

When I moved to Whidbey Island almost (gasp) 10 years ago I brought more "stuff" than I eventually used.  I didn't know what of my previous life would still be relevant to my new one.

Clearing out the attic was not just going through things and organizing them.  It was a saying goodbye in a way to things that mattered years ago but no longer mattered.

Mostly it was my stuff, not Vicky's, as she had already done that for the most part.

We filled three or four 20-gallon trash bins with stuff that was no longer relevant to me (lots of it having to do with my teaching, for example), and culled through the other stuff to take 10 boxes or so of usable items to donate to the thrift store and bookstore.

We went through every box and labeled the contents.  This will make it easier for the next culling, and for anyone else who needs to go through these boxes in future years.

It feels good to have this project done.  We started it three years ago, and made a lot of progress.  But other house projects got in the way of completing the job.

There is a little bit of grief to this process, just as there was when I sold my Corvair and when I disposed of almost all of my antiques and collectibles business.  But all of the things that are now gone represented good times, and those memories were not thrown out or donated.

What it looked like three years ago:

One trip to the bookstore and thrift store with donations.  We filled the car up twice:

Working up there is difficult for our old bodies--crawling around for hours on our knees, bending over a lot, etc.

 

Done!  Here are all of our Christmas Decorations and Snow Village collection. We kept all of that!

Boxes labeled and stacked, and room to move around:

Done!  On to the bathroom project!

A "pinto" deer. Can't believe it.

Look at this.  Never seen anything like it.  Just walking through our front yard this morning.

Project #1 Completed: From drab to bright and colorful!

We like projects.  Do you?

On our road trips to public lands we spend a good bit of time talking about which projects we want to complete when we are home.

One of them this year was painting the guest bedroom.  When I remodeled the house in 2007 I had picked a color that I ended up disliking---it was basically white, and so ended up being a nothing.

The entire project took about two weeks.  We would do a little at a time--much of it requiring being in awkward positions that were uncomfortable to our old bodies.

The "before' photos:

Painting:

 

After:

If you really want to appreciate how far this house has come in the past 11 years, here is a photo of this room in 2006.  For real:

A Homer Bucket bites the dust....er, ashes

We heat with wood, using our propane furnace for less than 5% of our heating needs.  Wood is much cheaper since we are always having trees fall on our property or needing to take them down before they fall on our house.  An endless supply of free warmth.

But our wood stoves require effort to take care of.  We get the chimneys swept regularly, have to put up firewood, are bringing in wood and putting it into the stoves all day, and have to deal with ashes.

Typically we wait a day or so after we have used one of the stoves to empty the ashes.  We have used a Home Depot Homer bucket. We let them cool for another day on the porch, then spread them in the woods.....on a rainy day.

Well, a few days ago I apparently didn't let all of the ashes cool sufficiently before placing them into the bucket:

 But this is why we take the precaution of letting them cool a day before spreading them.  We think we will throw it away instead of trying to repair it....har har har.

Time for a real ashes bucket, thanks to eBay: 

A very unhealthy competition between our house and our camper

C'mon guys.  Get along, OK?

Well, about a month ago, while camping on BLM land in Arizona our camper's furnace went out.  So we had to get it fixed.

The total cost for the repair was $260, for a part that was tiny. 

So we get home, and within three weeks the furnace goes out.  Hmmmmm.

Well, here is the bad part.  Look familiar?

Total cost of the repair?  You won't believe this:  $270.

House wins!

We were also told that furnaces have a lifespan of about 15 years.  When the repair-person was here, and he opened the brain of it, we could see a mass of wires, etc.  Everything was very clean.

But 15 years?  The furnaces in the olden days would last 40 years.  What's that all about?

The furnaces these days don't last very long, and they must be very insecure about it. So they want their repairs to be larger than repairs for a camper furnace.  No other explanation makes sense.

Varied Thrush flock.....and bring winter

One of our favorite birds that visits us on occasion is the Varied Thrush.  It comes here only "on occasion," when they migrate through.  They come in flocks of 15-25.

It was a cloudy day when they arrived this year so the photos aren't very good.  In the morning they were all over the back yard, and then that evening all over the front yard.  Then they left. 

And they left just in time, because soon after this happened:

Vicky took this photo.  Looks like a Christmas card:

p.s.  When the sun is out this is what the Varied Thrushes can look like.  They are beautiful.