The ex-workroom isn't the pristine, clean-to-the-walls shocker I was shooting for, but it's still gonna be a big surprise.

There's still the last bits of junk on the worktable, and my computer desk still has some fabric on it (chiefly the bits of proto-garb I sorted out to work on tomorrow), but the storage boxes against the south wall are gone (I think my son was genuinely surprised that there was a window there), the stack of fabric bolts under the counter is gone, and the stack of boxes and bolts under the worktable is gone. I'm going to have to drag the Shop-Vac up to take care of all the dust puppies (actually, these are partly dust teddy-bears, since I'm sure some of the fur there is synthetic).

My son was duly impressed (most of it happened while he was in preschool), especially when I told him after the worktable is moved, the little desk will be moved back so I can put a computer on it.

"For you?"

"No."

"For Daddy?"

"Nope."

"For who, then?"

"Well, Daddy and I already have computers, so..."

And his eyes lit up.

I've got the table about half cleared off. Of course, there again the 80/20 rule strikes... most of what I've done so far is sorted trash from non-trash. Now I have to decide what to do with the 20% (actually more like 5%) non-trash stuff.

Found some treasures down there, including part of a bolt of white linen/rayon fabric left over from curtainmaking, which will make a nice shirt. And that reminded me why I probably won't get things done sooner than Friday: this weekend is the local Renaissance Faire, and it's been awhile since we've gone to one in garb. My son needs pretty much a whole new outfit, having outgrown his, my husband needs ditto, so that they match, and I need to either re-bone my bodice or else make a bodice that fits over my new corset. Ordinarily, I'd say it was too much trouble given the current limbo of my workroom, but for a wonder it's supposed to be a high in the mid-60's, and my husband has *never* gotten to wear his wool cloak to the normally-much-hotter faires around here. And then I have to make an itty-bitty matching cloak for our son, too...

(We're not actually into the SCA or anything serious. It's just that... well, I sew costumes of all sorts, and playing dress-up once or twice a year is fun.)

So anyway, the housekeeping thing. This morning was mostly occupied by a second-in-the-week shopping trip (because I was desperately in need of dishwasher detergent) and parent-teacher-conference training (which turned out to be mostly unnecessary, but interesting in that I was one of only two English-as-first-language parents there).

My husband didn't notice, or at least didn't comment on, the absence of the wire shelf. So I think I'll be able to pull off the "Surprise, the family room's not a workroom anymore" by Friday. There's still a bit of cleaning to be done down there, but I only have to swap the folding table for the worktable. I may try to get that done tomorrow. I'll have to think about it.

Okay, that's not really true.

Last night, I went downstairs to do some laundry and ended up cleaning out the half-closet in the workroom-to-be. I emptied the unfinished bookshelf that was down there, and decided it wasn't suitable for storing my stuff on, and that that would be a good place for the wire shelf (one of those mesh cube thingies that never holds together with the little corner things they give you, but that works great lashed up with cable ties).

So today I carried the bookshelf out. It's lighter than the table, under forty pounds, and not as long, but it's also wider (about eight inches deep, six feet long, four feet tall). That was exciting, since with the boxes stacked there right now the hall formed by the server rack is not much over 18 inches wide (and I did *not* want to snag on, say, the DSL cable). Lugged that puppy out to the garage, where it needs to be finished.

Then I hauled the mesh shelf downstairs. It's even lighter, maybe ten pounds even with the stuff I left on/in it, but it's also 14" wide, and not quite as structurally sound as the table or wooden shelf. Oops. And after I caught it on the boxes and thereby reduced the hallway space to under 14", I wedged it behind the server rack for awhile.

But it's in there now, and I've started moving all my work stuff down there. I still have a lot of sorting to do on the folding table, but now I have someplace to put all the textile-related stuff that was stored down there. Whee!

My husband is likely to notice the absence of the mesh shelf, but if I'm lucky he will assume I just wanted to store bolts of fabric in its place instead (since that's what I'm doing, temporarily). All that's left, furniture-wise, is the dropleaf worktable. I'm shooting for Friday. Maybe sooner.

Well, not quite. But still, a 55+ pound table (that's 25 kilos) is still not going to be fun to haul down the stairs by myself.

And yeah, I just got the bathroom scale out and weighed it. (It's a "THINNER" brand. I'm thinking Stephen King, and thinking "If they named it that after the book/movie, what were they thinking? And if they had it first, did they sue?")

Anyway. The main problem is not the weight, it's the length, which is about two inches longer than the ceiling height in the basement. *Not* counting the ductwork, which is retrofitted (the house was built in 1919, and may have had a coal furnace at one point, and almost certainly had a gas-fired floor furnace at another).

(long pause)

Okay. It's done. Whew. I'll feel that tomorrow, but it's down there, set up, with about a hundred pounds of crap loaded onto it for sorting. I feel ever-so-much better about it now... the floor is mostly clear, and everything's at a decent height to sort through. I was able to load it up a lot more than the dropleaf cutting table that will eventually take its place, too.

Now I just need the energy to go tackle it. Whew. It's a cleaning project *and* a workout plan.

Today, in the course of straightening out my workroom a little (I couldn't find my box of eyes) I decided to do some carting *downstairs* for a change. I'd played around with the layout downstairs, and had pretty much decided to keep the little bookcase where it is, so I went to the cardboard box that holds my increasing library of costuming, stuffed animal, teddy bear, and doll books (well, what sort of eyes did you *think* I was talking about?) and put them on a shelf down there. Tomorrow when I work down there, I'll haul pattern boxes and such for that shelf. The only thing that's stopped me so far is the desire to surprise my husband with the workroom change all in one day, but I'm not sure that'll be practical anyway, plus smaller changes will be lost in the general straightening-up. I mean, right now Osama bin Laden could be hiding in the debris here in the workroom, and nobody'd know it, least of all me.

He wasn't in the box of eyes, though.

... for the vanload of old hardware I just dumped off at the recyclers, to be ground up and processed for precious metals and all that weird stuff they do these days.

I mentioned, several posts ago, that I was going to take them down there probably two weeks ago. I'm a recovering packrat; my husband is still just at the admitting-there's-a-problem stage. The conversation went something like this:

"This has *got* to go. It's a 386DX-40!"

"It's a perfectly good motherboard..."

"Dude, it's not worth the electricity to run it!"

"They don't use as big of power supplies..."

"It's still a 386DX-40! It goes!"

And they went. Another piece of our computing history. But hey, they're too big to put in a scrapbook. We saved a couple of P200s, and a stack o' hard-drives. I still have the LaserJet II, with the WinJet enhancement board and the excess memory, until we shop around and see if any of the parts are worth stripping. The whole beast is too heavy to be worth shipping, though.

Now I just have to rassle the now-freed-up folding table down into the basement. I'm going to use it to sort the remaining crapola in my old office. For some reason, sorting stuff stacked on the floor is much more depressing than having it on a table.

Phew. As predicted, I think the last twenty percent of this project is going to eat my lunch.

Of course, today was less productive than it should have been... after dropping my son off, I had to fix dinner to put it in the slow cooker (which should have happened before I took him to class, but there you are), so we didn't get down to the basement until almost 2. She vacuumed more while I cleaned my old office more, much of which consisted of picking things up and putting them down somewhere else. I think I was getting a feel for what was there, and where I was going to put it, but maybe it was just busywork, I'm not sure. I meant to sort laundry while I was down there, but I ended up blocking the door to the laundry room.

We did get some of the storage totes moved out of the stair-landing area, and I moved a shelf unit into it. There's only going to be room for one, though, if I want access to the deep freeze to be unobstructed. (Presently, the easiest way to get to it is to sit on the stairs and reach down into it. Non-optimal for deep stuff, but it's not a large unit.)

I think we have enough shelving. I have three that are really inefficiently used (read: junk is randomly piled on them). I might move one to the garage and replace it with a sturdier unit for some heavy stuff, but otherwise I think it's fine. Having everything neatly boxed is a major plus for moving them, though... take boxes off, stack neatly, move shelf, replace boxes, boom it's done.

I *still* don't know what to do about the computer desk, though. I think it's coming upstairs. I remembered a problem, though... it's not deep enough for large monitors. The 17" Nokia that currently occupies this desk (actually an undifferentiated work table) isn't deep, proportionally, but I bought that desk... um... in the era of my Amiga monitor. Back when I was single. Possibly before I even moved out of my parents' house.

Whoa.

Anyway, if it doesn't disintegrate upon the moving attempt, it will probably come upstairs. Only, I think that's going to be a two-person job, where both of the people are stronger than my cleaning lady is, which leaves me asking my husband, most likely.

Today was "put miles on the van" day. Ran up to Hutchinson to pick up my critters, ribbons, and checks ($3 for the pig, $7 for the wolf), came back for a quick lunch, then took my son to preschool, then went to WalMart, then went to a dentist appointment, then picked up my son from preschool, then came home to fix dinner.

And misread the recipe, so the Fruited Curry Chicken is Curry Fruited Curry Chicken Curry, with Extra Curry Spices. Woo.

So we went out to dinner. Fortunately, I have more chicken, and more fruit, so I'll "dilute" it tomorrow, and we'll have Fruited Curry Chicken For A Crowd.

My cleaning lady's having the last major dental surgery (of three) Thursday, so I'm having her over tomorrow and Wednesday and skipping next week. I'm going to have her take care of the neglected upstairs while I do more work in the basement.

In fact, I didn't even spend Thursday working on it... having volunteered to help out with a dinner party, I spent Thursday afternoon catching up on errands. Grocery shopping, picking up supplies for yesterday's craft group, buying the supplies for another teddy wolf, that sort of thing.

Yesterday, as mentioned, was the craft group. I taught a little lesson in making simple felt bears: http://www.silverseams.com/images/short_term/kuninbears.jpg They're very simple to make, so I might make a few more as Christmas gifts. Kind of fun, and cute if you like that sort of thing. I don't, especially. The wolf's my idea of cute.

I forgot I won't have five days to work on the basement this week: I have a church function on Friday.

Oh well. It's looking unlikely that I'd have everything done even with all five days. Good progress was made today... we unpacked boxes full of books (mostly textbooks) that have sat open collecting dust, and dusted them, thereby widening the hallway back to its original proportions, and then swept/ShopVacced the stairs and hallway.

Word to the wise: Shop Vacs are great, as I said, but if you the small ("1x1") vac, which has a slightly narrower hose, don't try vacuuming up a packing-peanut spill. It was kind of funny, but annoying, to watch packing peanuts come zooming out from under shelves and whatnot, far from where we were actually vacuuming (even a 1hp vac has some pretty good power), hellbent on clogging up the vac.

Since I only had one set of hearing-protector earmuffs, I left my cleaning lady coping with all that and went to go clean up the prospective workroom. I started clearing some of the unboxed stuff off the shelving units, so that I can move the shelves into the bigger room and put boxed stuff on them.

Since I'm now getting down into the silly little stuff that's harder to sort out, or to fit into boxes (I have a fair amount of oversized drawing paper), I figure this is the last 20% that will take 80% of the time.

So I'll have tomorrow to work on it, at least. My calves will be in much better shape by the end of this, from all the stair-climbing.

I moved a lot more stuff around down in the basement. Some of it was actually putting it away, some of it was just, well, moving it around and trying to figure out what I was going to do with it. I'm losing a bit of momentum, partly because the easy stuff's done now, but mostly because I started out tired from yesterday already. I gotta get in shape.

Found two more computers and monitors lurking in the stack of church computers. When the church lost its donated office space, the pastor took the computer from his office home, and I ended up with the Linux server and admin machine, being as how I was the admin. I moved the server stuff onto one of our home servers (which already ran the church website). We still haven't figured out what to do with the admin machine. Guess we should sell it, since by the time we have permanent office space again, it'll be obsolete.

In any case, I sorted laundry, threw stuff away ruthlessly (and blew out the side of our big wastebasket, annoyingly), encountered a box of 5.25" diskettes I'd really like to be able to read for nostalgic reasons but probably can't because they and/or the drives have deteriorated too much, and discovered an entire ecology in a former birdseed container. (It wasn't, sadly for its occupants, self-sustaining.)

The birdseed container wasn't the only evidence of bug occupation... there were quite a few spiders down there. No brown recluses, so far, but I'm cautious about putting my hands in anywhere I can't see. Pretty cobwebby, too.

I've avoided actually vacuuming anything just yet, saving that for tomorrow when my cleaning lady's here. Gonna turn her loose with the hearing protectors and the mini-Shop Vac. Preacher's right, Shop Vacs rock for cleaning house, especially when you have a cat who occasionally plays hockey with his or the dog's kibble. But they're loud.

I'm not sure now if I'll make my move-everything-by-Friday goal. I might not have the energy to do it. But I'm by golly going to get close. I measured the closets and they'll fit twelve totes each. I have fifteen or sixteen right now, so I plan to occupy one closet with them and leave the other for my husband's stuff (the basement is divided into two main rooms, one of which was apparently a master bedroom, with two closets, the other of which was apparently a kid's room, with a single quasi-closet... built out into the room, a low curtain rod with cabinets above it). I've decided to put the workroom in the smaller room. It's 10x10 less the closet, less the wacky little ledges I mentioned in comments last time, so it'll be cramped with a 48x72" worktable in it, but that's the only thing that's required in there except the sewing desk, which is fairly small. There are two shelving units in there now, which I may move into the other room if I can figure out how to get them all flush against the wall. Stupid ledges.

(Okay, the Preacher link's not working in the preview, so if it's not there in the final, go here, removing spaces as necessary: http://blogs.salon.com/0001772/stories/2004/06/14/iWroteSomeStuffAndNowIHaveAShopvac.html)

Today was the first day of five-day-a-week pre-kindergarten, and I've made good progress toward my clean-the-basement-this-week goal.

I didn't get the computer equipment marked yet... my husband isn't quite into the "If there's any doubt, get rid of it!" spirit yet. We're both hopeless pack rats, so I'm making myself get rid of stuff ruthlessly. So far we have one monitor to keep for a spare (they're all small 15"), have decided to trash all the hard drives (none of the working ones are over a gig), and the keyboards (except one big clicky M-type, which I love) are going in the garage sale box. The computers are probably all going away, but my husband has to agonize over it a little first, I think.

Meanwhile, I cleaned the litterbox today, which badly needed it. And then I boxed up books downstairs... that's temporary (I think) so that we can move them upstairs. Then I started sorting the junk that's accumulated in what used to be my husband's workroom down there, and surveying what's in the closets (answer: stuff that should be on shelves). I think I'm going to gut the closets and build some 2x4 frames to hold the Rubbermaid totes that hold most of the business' inventory. I still haven't decided if that room's going to be the business' workroom or not. I'm trying to avoid it.

And then I sorted laundry. And now I'm pooped.

We drove up to Hutch again for the state fair, and I had the camera ready to take a picture of the milo field if the lighting was right... and when we got up there, there was a big field of dirt, with a harvester off in one corner being unloaded. So I guess calling it "ripe" it was a pretty good call, for a suburbanite. Oh well. My pig won a ribbon, so I'm pleased.

Prior to that, on Thursday, I had my cleaning lady over while my son was at preschool, and we tackled the basement, which we'd more or less abandoned when my son started walking. We hauled up all the junk computer equipment that's accumulated down there... less of it that I'd expected. (There's some in the garage, but that's my husband's problem.) Three monitors, four computers (or at least the chassis thereof, in various states of strippedness). And a bunch of keyboards (mostly broken) and random ISA cards. And a couple of Colorado Jumbo tape drives... one 40/80 and one 120/250. And a really old Epson dot-matrix printer. The LaserJet II is up here only in spirit (and paper trays), because it was too heavy to lug and would have made my folding table faw down go boom.

I'm gonna go stick Post-Its that say "toss" or "keep" and make a trip to the computer recyclers on Monday. Then I'll see about maneuvering the folding table back downstairs to sort more stuff on. It's actually not as cluttered as it looked at first blush. I might be able to get it cleaned up this week yet. I also have to decide what to do with our ancient (mine, at least is over twelve years old) O'Sullivan computer desks. I've mostly switched to using a plain heavy-duty table, but I'm considering going back. If I can get it up the stairs without it disintegrating, anyway.

This is probably the prettiest time of year around here. Kansas' state flower is the sunflower - not the gargantuan single-flower type, but the only-distantly-related roadside sunflower bush, with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of smaller but still classically gold-and-brown blooms. They line the highway from here to Hutchinson, a trip I took yesterday. One tableau in particular caught my eye, and we'll have to stop by the roadside with the camera tomorrow when we take that trip again.

Beyond the sunflower hedge of green, gold and brown, a field of ripening milo was a sea of variegated henna. All it lacked was good sunset lighting. Kansas is not a spectacularly colorful state, so you take these sorts of scenes when you can find them.

The rest of the trip was pleasantly pastoral... not your boring I-70 stretches of vast, undifferentiated fields, but lots of smaller, older farms. It's Mennonite country up there. A part of my would love to throw over the whole technological thing and learn how to farm. The other part of me, of course, would be saying "But you can't get broadband out there!"

Today was the first day of preschool. I dropped my son off, then had two and a half hours to get stuff done. That time wasn't very efficient, since it was interrupted by a house fire. Not mine, one across the street, but I did have to take pictures for my son. Four or five trucks, including a huge aerial platform truck (which proved unnecessary, it being a basement fire), are still out front, out of close to twice that number.

Fortunately, they unblocked the street in time for me to pick up my son, and I got my first Papers Brought Home From School.

Including Red Wheel fundraising crap. What is up with *that*? The very first day of *pre* kindergarten my kid's supposed to be pimping cookie dough? Say *what*?

Something wrong with government spending here, folks. Bake sales and band candy are one thing, but this is ridiculous.