Dusting off the wishes

I'm itching for Spring, and it's not the itch that comes from too much nature. While I still want my cold weather at night, I also want the sunny days so I get out on the deck and use it for something other than playing host to some possibly dead bamboo.



I'm shopping for a grill. Because it's an apartment in Seattle, "they" are rather particular about what I do when I play with fire. There are 4 requirements I have to meet when I grill.

• It has to be a gas grill
• It has to use the 16 ounce or smaller gas containers
• I have to have a fire extinguisher nearby
• I have to have a fire resistant mat under the grill (not required, but strongly recommended by the building manager as she looked at me with those scary you-must-comply eyes)

When I think out door activities and out door equipment, I think on one solution -- The Internet.

That brought me to Amazon, as most surfing ultimately does (damn them and their convenient ordering and adequate customer service).

On Amazon, I have two wish lists. My default is the "Please buy this for me list" which (no surprise) is filled mainly with books. The second list is one that's full of things I want to "Keep and eye on." Naturally, it is called, "Keep and eye on." When I see something I think I want, but I'm not sure, it goes on this list. When I'm shopping around and looking at different products, they go on this list.

Tonight, I dropped the Weber Q200 on that list. I'm still looking at grills, so that's where it goes.

That turns out to be a pretty dusty list. As I went though it, the contents broke down roughly like this:

• 10% Things I might want
• 15% Things I forgot I might want
• 25% Things I'm comparing to one another
• 40% Things I have
• 10% What the heck is that doing on there?

It turns out I'm as good at de-cluttering my ad-hoc book mark system as I am at de-cluttering my apartment.

Need proof? I scrolled down this list and saw this:


It includes three cameras I was considering back in December of 2005. I eventually bought one (the Nikon) but they all sat there -- waiting. And hoping one day that I would come back to evaluate them again.

*DELETE*

Now if only I were that ruthless with the delete key in my apartment...

A clean apartment

Housekeeping has never been my strongest skill. But when I set my mind to it, I can do a pretty good job. I am out of my old apartment now and living in my new one, surrounded by boxes.

My old apartment looks pretty good, despite the 6+ years of normal wear and tear. It is mildly frustrating, though, knowing that it is the cleanest it's been in years, I did that cleaning, and I don't get to enjoy it at all.

I think the reason I can clean well when moving out of a place is that it is a one time project. When I'm done, I'm done. It's finished. Mission accomplished. I can win.

Day to day cleaning is different, though. As soon as normal housework is done, it's time to start all over again. And I hate that.

Storage

The first couple summer during my college years, I went home. I hauled all my dorm room stuff down to the local U-Haul self storage warehouse. It was an industry that I hadn't even heard of up to that point.

Now it seem self storage units are popping up across the country like kudzu as people realize they have too much stuff for their homes.

I have strong pack rat tendencies. I like to save stuff "just in case." Various things might be useful again after several years. After being overwhelmed with stuff that wasn't giving me any enjoyment, I thought about spending the money on a storage unit. I began looking at prices.

Of course, the stuff I'm talking about wasn't exactly gold bars. In some cases it was obsolete computer equipment, apartment hard ware, misceallaneous house hold goods, AV stuff, and assorted random things.

I finally settled on a different type of self storage:
Target. Or Best Buy. Or Costco. Or whomever. It doesn't really matter.

At some point it dawned on me that it would probably be cheaper to just throw stuff out and replace it with something new if it turned out that I did, in fact, need it later on.

This freedom to get rid of stuff has helped me reduce (certainly not eliminate) excess clutter in me life. It's cheaper and less stressful to replace stuff in many cases than to store it.

Buying a replacement for something I threw away is no longer a waste of money. It's simply a form of paying my "storage fee."