Barton and I recently rented a self-storage unit, and have been seriously hammering away at all of the stuff we own that we don’t regularly use, to get it in boxes/totes and moved into the storage space. Some of the things getting packed away are items that we would love to have at our fingertips or on display – if we owned a house. But an 800-ish square foot apartment? Nope, there is just not enough room. We still have a long way to go though, and I expect the unit will be mostly full by the time we’re satisfied with our de-cluttering efforts. This will also make moving a slightly less monumental task.. I hope.

We also joined a local ham radio club this year – MARA (Michigan Amateur Radio Alliance). Interacting with those folks, and attending the monthly meetings has been a welcome break to the usual work-chores-sleep-work-chores-sleep monotony. We also joined the ARRL as well. I’ve been studying, off and on, to get ready to take the General License exam too, hopefully I will have that accomplished by sometime this coming spring.

If you have looked through my Tumblr (Warning: do not click on that link if you are at all sensitive to sexual content.. especially giantwtfomgbbqrobosex) at all, you’ve probably noticed I’ve had a huge resurgence in following Transformers/Transfandom this year. I’d hoped I might be able to attend Botcon 2012, but alas, it is now prohibitively expensive to go. Maybe 2013? Urgh. HOWEVER, I am still immensely looking forward to the second season of Transformers: Prime which premieres in February.

If you have waded through this massive update and are still with me… thank you… and…

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Spent most of today cleaning, taking out trash, etc. I think the apartment looks the least cluttered since we moved into it in Dec 09. At this rate it should be both spartan and spotless by the time my vacation is over.

Pfffft. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Then the water thing happened. You remember the water thing, right? yeah. So we moved again. and I stopped keeping up with my paperwork on a massive scale. I just kept throwing stuff on a pile in my desk cupboard:

Today I decided to actually get started on fixing this problem.

I pulled out all of the unopened envelopes and laid them out on the table:

Then, I sorted everything by who it was from:

It helps when you have the proper tools – can you tell what is wrong with the opener on the right? It works as well as a finger

And now, this is what I have left:

I’m also feeling accomplished about cooking at home more often. The last few weekends I’ve managed to cook at least 2-3 meals at home each weekend. While that doesn’t sound like much, its huge for us because 3 meals cooked at home equals 1 meal going out, in terms of cost.

Speaking of costs, I’m also revisiting getting a solid budget put together. Its hard to do, especially when your $outgo exceeds your $income every single month. Since before I started working at LW I have not been able to make it one month without adding to my credit card debt, and that is really sad. However, with the help of some unexpected extra $income I got about a month ago, I may be able to break that trend. May being the keyword here. We’ll see.

CLOTHES. OMG clothes. I know, just offhand, there are 3 fairly large plastic totes full of just clothes. Some are mine, some are Barton’s. That we’re not wearing now. That we might never wear. In the fall we took a couple of boxes of clothes to my Dad’s (along with boxes of other Stuff).

I don’t know why this happens. I’d like to think I tend to be frugal in my purchases. I don’t go on “shopping sprees” very often, maybe twice a year. I spend hours in the store(s) looking for just the X thing that suits my need. I have a coupon or its on sale. I buy it, bring it home, BUT.. (like in the case of the damned clothes) I re-decide later that it doesn’t work. The clothes that DO work for me though. I keep wearing those for years. Looking at my ‘wardrobe’ now, honestly, most of the stuff I wear daily looks kinda shabby. :/

“Damn, the legs on these jeans I just bought are too tight. But they didn’t feel that way in the store? Well, shit. I washed them now, they probably shrank. I’ll throw them in the closet and maybe in 6 months I’ll lose some weight and they’ll fit.”

But does that ever happen? Fuck no. And so, the Stuff Grows.

We’re going to be in this new apartment at least until May 2011. Between now and then, the extra, unused, unnecessary Stuff must shrink, and be gone. Really gone. Donated, trashed, sold – not just stored, but really and truly gone. It will be my mission.