Cleaning up the storage locker

 We have a lot of stuff. 

We have put some of it into storage to make room but, it’s been packed in waves.  With the pandemic, we haven’t really be keeping up with sorting and sending more to storage.  We’ve also gotten to the age where we are less precious about what to keep.

We took some time and spent a day in the storage locker moving a bunch of it out, and sorting it back in.  My dad had picked up some nice metal racks for cleaning up his garage and gave one to us.  We spent another day moving more boxes out to make room for it, and then moving them back in.

This has allowed us to go through some of the things we stored and take a second look at them.  A lot of the kid’s toys and books got packed away over the years, and they were able to go through them and decide what they actually wanted to keep.  We moved four or five bins of toys, and two bins of kid’s books in which they had no interest.  Most went to Value Village, and some went to a local place for Ukrainian refugees.

I started getting rid of some games that I had thrifted when I thought we would have room but didn’t live up to expectations.  I’m trying to at least play the games before moving them along. 

We got rid of three bins of VHS tapes.  I kept back two bins – with mostly Disney and some Anime.  Plus two movies that I have not been able to get on DVD yet – The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, and the theatrical release of Highlander 2.

I also found a sealed copy of Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time for the N64.  When Tribute.ca first launched, they weren’t very busy and we won a lot of the contests that they had.  This was one of the prizes but we never had a N64 so it just got put away.  Apparently it is worth quite a bit now.

 

A bit of a shakeup

My wife has had a bit of a shakeup at work. She will be ‘retiring’ at the end of October as they are closing her department. She was thinking about retiring in a few years but that would have been on her timeline. Any changes to her plans always throws her a bit off, but she is coming to terms with it. We should end up being okay.

This will have two direct gaming-related impacts on me. First, she will be home and prone to cleaning through my stuff. I keep putting off doing a good sift and will need to make that a higher priority. Secondly, the storage locker becomes even more of a hot button than it currently is. We are hanging on to a lot of stuff. Some of it was stored in haste and we really need time to go through it properly again and repackage it and decide if really does need to be kept. I had done a bit of a sift a while ago, and we repackaged the 11 bins of models model kits into 6 boxes.

I have been meaning to go through a bunch of the games and maybe passing them along. Especially with the games that I had picked up when it seemed like we were getting an expansion on the house. A lot of those I am not particularly attached to and could let go. It’s also time to take another look at the books and comics. This was all stuff that we were going to do anyways.

This just puts more of an impetus on this.

Streamlining games

I’ve been packing away some of the extra games to go to the storage locker. I had a bunch of games on the shelves that we don’t really play often anymore – like Wabbit Wampage and People. Also those that we have a few extra copies of games – like Heroquest and Star Wars Duels as well as multiple versions of the same game – like Monopoly and Clue. By putting these into storage, it streamlines the shelves down to make the games we do play more accessible. Plus it eliminates the stacks of games that are piled around the room.

It doesn’t look nearly as impressive but it also looks less overwhelming. Hopefully, this should make it easier to actually play some of the new games we keep buying as well as try some of the old games I keep getting at the thrift stores. This will help us to see which ones we should keep handy and which ones can also get packed away.

Desk top achieved

I’ve been needing to work at my desk for a while. When we moved my stuff out of the spare room and the boy in, time was more of a crucial factor so I didn’t have the time to properly sift through things. With the extra space in the storage unit, I needed to go through the boxes already on it as well as the extra 6 months of stuff that has been piled up on top of that.

With the holidays coming up, I’ve had a bit more impetus to get it done. I have taken everything off my desk and have been working at sifting it and putting some of it back. Some of it will go back on and in the desk, some will go in storage in the back room, and some will go in deep storage in the storage unit.

For a first pass, I've gotten it back to a reasonable mess. The wife may disagree.

Been Busy - part 5

October has been a very busy month - mostly with chores and renovations though.

We finished painting the outside of the house, including the trim.  The kids were very helpful with painting.  I also managed to paint the exposed platform of the new shed - which  should help it last a bit longer through the weather.

We replaced the fascia on the back of the house - which included painting the boards before putting them up.  Changing the lower fascia involved removing the eavestrough and putting it back.  I was concerned that this would very difficult but it went quite easily.

My brother came over and replaced the outside lights with motion sensor versions.  He also replaced some of the loose switches inside.  Being a electrician, he swaps them out without pulling the breakers which always makes me a bit nervous.

I was able to get to the storage locker and spend about two hours sifting the contents.  I pulled out a bunch of the boxes and restacked the plastic tubs together and put a bunch of the cardboard boxes on a skid.  I was also able to move some of the more needed boxes to more handy locations to make them easier to get as needed.  This should allow even more boxes to be stored.

It stayed warm enough for my dad to come over and help replace some of the trim which had rotted with flashing and new boards.  If the weather holds later this week, I hope to get a layer of paint on it before the snow comes.  While he had his table saw here we also cut the wood to put together a bench for the shed. This should let me stack things better and move more stuff out of the old shed before the squirrel settles in for the winter.
Sifted storage locker.

been busy - part 3 - moved storage

On Saturday morning, we got the kids up and moved everything out of our old 10’ x 10’ storage locker into a new 10’ x 15’ storage locker. With everyone’s help it only took about 3 hours and, in the resifting, we were able to stack a lot better. 

I will still need to spend some time moving around what’s left in there to better stack the rest of it, and the wife wants to move more out of the basement storage and hallway to free up some extra space so that we can move more off of my desk to be able to use it again. 

pantry, table

I picked up some metal rack from my folks and set them up in what used to be the comic storage room. D3 and I then moved over all the canned goods from the pantry shelf to the racks in the new pantry. Then I was able to clean off the table in the family room by moving stuff to the shelves.

That opens up 3/4 of that room at this point. By clearing the table we can now get to the games behind them and even play them on the table. It also gives me an extra space to clear the desk albeit very temporary as I need to keep it clear at the end of the night.

We picked up a new dvd player (as the old one went to G with the old TV) and hooked that up as well. I confirmed it worked by watching the first disc of Red VS Blue season 6.
We took another small load to the storage unit. We are getting pretty close to our limit until I resort the skid of extras. I also packed up another box of books.

Now I just have to sift my desk to clean it down enough to clear out the stack in the kitchen. I’m hoping by the end of this month – maybe even by the end of the weekend.

Then I can start ramping up for Halloween costumes.

Slide puzzle - basically done!

The family-room-shuffle went much better that I had thought. On Saturday we moved over the TV, and pulled out the toy shelf. We moved over the desk and pulled out the bed. We moved over the game shelves and table. We only had to half-empty each one before moving it and then put the games back afterwards. Then we were able to set up the bed again.

All told, it took Shan and me about 4 hours to do all this. This was almost half the time it would have taken if I had to empty out everything before moving it myself. We started early in the morning and were done well before the boy finally awoke at 3pm. We found that the small desk wouldn’t fit behind the door after all so we would have to move a bookcase there. We were much too tired by that point to continue moving furniture on so we took a break and I worked away at boxing up books. We also went out for supper and to get more bins. Gee spent Friday night through Sunday over at a friend’s so at least she wasn’t underfoot.

On Sunday afternoon we got back downstairs and moved the bookcase behind the door. Then we moved the books from the next bookcase to that one and moved that bookcase aside. We then moved over the toy shelf and then took everything off the small desk and then moved it next to the toy shelf. We put the bookcase on the other side of the doorway where the small bookcase had been and moved over the books from the last bookcase into it. Then we took out the extra bookcase. D3 and I did two loads to the storage unit to get rid of the books and newly purchased bins now full of toys.

Having moved the last of my stuff out of his closet and desk, D3 was able to move down his legos, clothes, and toys. I worked away at cleaning down the stuff piled on the bed and Shan worked away at Gee’s room. At this point, the kids are mostly settled, the main part of the family room is back to usable quality again, and my stuff still needs to be sorted and cleaned from my desk. There is a bit to be done on the table and I need to go through and pack away some of the games we have that we aren’t likely to actually play soon. But we’re mostly done.
Quite the weekend (and summer).

Then we can start gearing up for Halloween.

Desk out!

I was able to put some good time towards it on Friday night and we took a load to the storage locker on Saturday. I did the last little bit on Sunday and was able to clear my desk right down. We took apart the spare bed in the family room and the boy and I were able to fight the desk out of the room. That took a bit of effort.
We had to take all the shelves out and we were unable to take the desktop off so we had to flip it on its side and slide it through the doorway. Even with that we had to take the door off of the hinges.

The only part of the carpet that was damaged was in the corner where we had some wood piled up when it had flooded years ago. The rest of it looks passable. Since that corner will be covered by the bed we should be okay with keeping it for now.

My folks had previously said that we could have my old bed and dresser to use for D3. I called my folks on Sunday about getting them. They still had to clean off the stuff they had piled on it. It seems even though we had told them weeks ago that we would take them, they hadn’t cleaned it off yet either. So we’ll try and get them this week – ideally tonight.

With the desk in the family room, the push is now on to empty out a few bookcases to start the slide puzzle that will need to happen. To that end, since we were unable to get the bed last night, I packed up another box of books. I could pack them away much faster but I am writing up cards for the books that are going into storage so we can find them if we need to.

closet cleared

So, it took all of the extra six bins to pack away the model kits. That makes twelve bins of models, plus a big box, plus a bag of three kits. There are still three kits that didn't make it but they will hang around for now.
We took them all to the storage locker and they stand in two big rows of blue bin happiness.

So I hope to clear my desk and move it out of the room by tomorrow. Then we need to decide on the carpet - maybe clean it, maybe pull it out. Then we can move the bed and dresser in there. Then the boy can start moving his stuff down while I finish moving the furniture in the family room.

It's like one of those sliding puzzles. I have to move this to move that, in order to move this over there. Then I have to move it all back.

lil' Tuece coupe

For Father’s Day I got a pair of T-shirts and some movies – including Tron Legacy. We had gone to my dad’s for a barbeque and I climbed up and retrieved my Apple IIc boxes from the garage rafters.

In packing away my Tuece (Apple IIc) for storage my daughter said that my keyboard was “broken”. She is learning keyboarding already in school. I explained that my keyboard was fine – what I had done was changed the layout to Dvorak.

The Apple IIc had two dip switches on top. One would let you change your monitor resolution from 40 characters to 80 characters across. The other would toggle between Qwerty and Dvorak. I had to fix a key and I ended up removing a third of the keyboard to get access to it. At that point I had changed over to Dvorak. My then-girlfriend could touch type when she needed to use the keyboard and I could hunt and peck as it was.

Good times. Good memories of GEnie, and many hours of Lode Runner, Ultima III and Ultima IV, and Moebius.

stored and sore

So we were able to get another three loads taken to the storage locker on Saturday. On my last load I noticed that they had some carts to use to help unloading. This would have been good to know on Friday when I had carried boxes of books down the hallway to the locker.
Then I helped Shan turn the soil in the garden so she could plant before the rain started.

On Sunday we took the back seat out of the van and took two loads of comics to the storage locker. Shan and D3 carried them up the stairs and we loaded them in the van. This filled one of the skids 6 layers high with longboxes and regular boxes. That's almost 6 feet of comics - the stack towers over the rest of the family.
(We have a lot of comics).

So we have emptied out the storage room and the comics room and still haven't filled half of the locker. That means I will have plenty of room to move over a bunch of boxes from my room. The funny thing is, because this was all in our storage room and the comics were in the storage closet and hidden from view, even with these moved over it doesn't look like we've made a dent yet. My room will be the same way.

Pack away your troubles

It's not really that I can say that we're now the proud owners of a storage locker but rather necessity has driven us to have one. I have a 10'x10'x8' temperature controlled unit. It's costing us $200 a month. In four years it will be $10,000 gone away with nothing to show for it instead of being paid towards renovations done but gang aft agley.

I took a load with me when I went to register Friday morning. I wanted to make sure we got one before they all filled up at the end of the month. The unit came with two skids in it that we will put to use. I was able to get three more loads done in the rain and now our downstairs storage room is over half empty.
We'll try and do another few loads on Saturday, and then see about moving over the comics on Sunday when the rain stops. After that, I can make a start at emptying out my room and we can see what condition it is in.

It's not the best solution but we're trying to make the best of it.

Spring chores

A few things have interrupted my western town building of late. The first is finally getting a new laptop – which means that I can finally play Hellgate after all these years. So far, I’m liking it!

The second is having the possibility of a game room in our renovation plans dashed by the bank. It was a long shot but as the time went along I got more and more used to the idea. The vision of being able to spread out a game and walk away from it afterwards – cleaning it up later became more and more appealing. With that off the table for now, we’ve had to take a bit harder look at our current set up and have decided we need to put a lot of stuff into storage for now. Not just some of the non-played games (that we want to keep) but also older toys, and other stuff.

That said, we’ve never done off-site storage before. I’m figuring that we probably want a heated/cooled unit. Has anyone out there done this before? Our basic storage unit is a printer paper box. Would these hold up? Anyone have good experiences or is storage always a bad step before just getting rid of everything?

Finally, now that we've gotten some nice weather (and having no renovations to interupt us), we have yard work to do. We did our first mow of the year on Monday. Shan raked the front yard yesterday - we still have the back to rake. We'll have to turn the garden, move the last composter to the back, and see if I can cut the metal pole by the back gate to make room for a shed. I'm thinking about removing the pole for the old pool cover as well.
Then we have to decide if the summer will be warm enough to set up the pool.