Declutter – Page 2 – Sidewalk Face

Darkroom timer with peanut butter; a domestic still life

January 2, 2021March 9, 2021by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl6 Comments

This post is all about the image. What do you think might have contributed to forming this particular arrangement? Consulting with husband, it was not intentional, three items on their way from one location to another, temporarily congregating together like boarders on different flights might mingle briefly at a magazine stand.

We were doing a bit of winter decluttering. This location had formerly been taken up with a wooden shelf warehousing dried legumes, still uneaten since early pandemic hoarding. Next to it was another filled with empty boxes, across from one holding all our CDS. Is it relevant to point out we don’t have a CD player? There is also a room divider hiding things I don’t even want to know about. The entire hallway had been reduced from a two-person thoroughfare to a one way only path. What is the point of that? Would you take the narrowest part of your home, the one most traveled, and constrict the flow? We’re constantly colliding into and inching around each other. A great way to increase irritation in case you’re needing more of that.

So, fixing this stupidity was the first thing that happened. Suddenly there was space again. The food shelf moved to the kitchen and kicked this cool 60’s relic out into the hallway, probably on its way to the garage. The darkroom timer was playing the role of ready-made sculpture on top of another cramped shelf in the dining room/office and it and everything else got cleared off in a minimalism frenzy. It’s also on its way to the garage.

The peanut butter is the real problem. Can it go to the garage? I can’t throw it away; I don’t want to eat it. It’s basically here in case of the apocalypse. It got placed on the lower tier while we decide where it’s going to live. Please don’t let it get behind the hallway room divider and start having promiscuous, unprotected sex with the harem of unused frames hiding there. Thank goodness inanimate objects can’t breed or we would be overrun with sticky rectangles.

Declutter, Humor

Hammers and Light Bulbs

November 10, 2020March 15, 2021by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl4 Comments

My husband had the tool kit out because he was installing a shelf for our son. I noticed (because oh boy, I am forever noticing things) that it was stuffed to the gills. Just overflowing with..with…with what?

I start pulling everything out. Do we need five hammers? Twelve pliers? We have fourteen tiny eye glass screw drivers. How am I under the impression we had none? More importantly, why are there lightbulbs here? With the hammers? Why are the lightbulbs and hammers being stored together? That’s like storing the raw hamburger meat inside the milk cartoon with the milk. Or housing the puppies with the tigers.

This is what happens when you aren’t vigilante. You make money, nurture a child, show up for a friend and boom! The hammers and lightbulbs are cohabitating. Where are my priorities?

So I said to husband, let’s spend an hour tomorrow morning fixing this. Oh, my bad, I meant all day. Just the length of time it takes to sort 400 screws in 25 varieties abiding in 20 different locations. Did you have other plans?

In a world where this was my only domain, I’d ace it. I’d be a sexy comforting one-woman home depot. Imagine I live in the closet. Husband opens the door. Hey hon, can you hand me a 9 x 2 in. Star Drive Round Head? Here ya go big boy! Thanks so much for fixing the garage door! I love you!

I can do anything if only I can just stay focused on it. But nobody has time to babysit screws and so they propagate wildly and invade the storage area like kudzu. There is no where they don’t go.

A few other observations. The toolbox, which is used every single week, was relegated to the worst possible closet real estate, literally behind a big plastic drawer that holds batteries, tape and crepe streamers. What do you think is used more often, screwdrivers or birthday streamers? You said streamers, us too, let’s give those the CEO parking space. The tools can hoof it to the bottom of the ten-level parking garage.

The final WTF was a box of DVD backups from 2005 that were easier to access than the tools. Who negotiated their primo lease? What even is a DVD backup? Oh yes, it’s coming to me. You burn files onto them like a mini hard drive so that if your computer dies you still have this valuable information. What is the valuable information that is easier to access than the vacuum cleaner attachments? Deliverables from a job I did 14 years ago? Yeah, that makes sense.

I shared these thoughts with husband and he reminded me how we came to have so many hammers. On a dog walk he came across a bag of hammers. You know the proverbial “dumb as a bag of hammers”. That kind of bag of hammers. Seven identical hammers in a thin plastic shopping bag. What’s the story there? I can’t even begin. You know what’s dumb as a bag of hammers, picking it up, bringing it home and putting it in the toolbox.

To fix something this fakakta you have to start completely over. Everything has to come out, be handled and considered. It’s a royal pain in the ass. Makes you doubt everything you believe in. But when it’s done! Ahh, you can hear the angels sing and the glory lasts. For at least a month or two. Until someone doesn’t put a screw away.

Art, Creative Process, Declutter, Sidewalk Faces

What Should I Do With These Sticks?

November 6, 2020by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl8 Comments

Sticks are so useful, I never have enough. Sometimes I get frustrated and gather a lot at once. As I cleaned out my overstuffed dog walk bags on my desert retreat, I discovered I did actually have enough. Way more than enough. I needed to let some go. I needed to throw them away.

No! That doesn’t feel good. I will not divest before giving them a chance at the big time. I personally selected those sticks and carried them around for months. They will have their 15 minutes. Here goes.

**Yes. Works so well, now he’s demanding a cap.**

**Next time you are in Target perusing the cookie sheets you’ll think, that would be perfect for sorting my sticks.**

Even though this was the first face I made in the desert and the first post I wrote after returning home with my newly cleaned out bags, I am posting him last. He sums up the process nicely. I picked up some sticks, I arranged them into a face, I threw them away.

Seth Godin says: There’s a hackneyed expression, which is what would you do if you knew you could not fail. I find that completely unhelpful because it’s basically a genie question; You want control and you’re never gonna get it. Here’s my question. What would you do if you knew you would fail? What would be worth doing even though it’s not going to work?

I can say I will make faces out of crap on the sidewalk no matter what. I mean, what outcomes are even possible? It’s not an activity with a known outcome. And maybe that’s why I love it. It’s just a fun, joyful thing to do.

The problem, because there is always a problem, is that I collect stuff and then I am saddled with stuff. Then I have to agonize over choices. Keep it or chuck it? Keeping objects is a sign I believe in their potential, or maybe that I believe in my potential, to turn them into something that could make me smile. But is it worth the burden of having all these grubby, difficult to store objects? I really don’t know. Even as I write, all the stuff I let go of in the desert is in a plastic bag under the drawing table in my office. I haven’t thrown it away! Just in case I think of something I might need in there. Have I learned nothing? Or have I learned everything?

I do think I will throw it out, probably once the Christmas decorations rear their multitudinous heads. There won’t be room for everyone. The fact that it’s sorted in a single disposable container means it will be much easier and faster to get rid of then when it was spread over multiple bags and mixed with treasure. Processes are time consuming. If I knew how to make them not that way, I would tell you.

I think going forward I will be more choosey about what I pick up, I will try to make the face right away and when all else fails I will not berate myself for having tangible signs that I was interested in something. Better to be interested than apathetic. So, I will tell myself this: Self! If you have some junk laying around waiting to become a face, don’t get so upset. Something wonderful is sure to happen.

The Seth Godin quote comes from the Time Ferris podcast of October 26th, 2020: Seth Godin on The Game of Life, The Value of Hacks, and Overcoming Anxiety (#476). It is fantastic and I highly recommend it.