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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Bad news and good news


Cate rang from Delhi to say she had some good news and bad news.

The bad news was that she was not coming home for the weekend – the Goat Thing in Delhi being bigger than she had imagined - so she needs more time there.  She will go straight from Delhi to Dubai – so I may see her at the end of next week – just before she goes to Shanghai.

The good news is that I have more time to bring all the boxes up from the basement before she gets home.

She has actually no idea how much stuff is in the basement because she has never been down there. Any time I have something for which there is no room in the apartment I ask what to do with it and she says to put it in the basement - and this has been going on for four years.

So the plan is that I will bring boxes up from the basement – Cate will open them and cull the contents and I will take the reduced contents back down. Our surplus books can go to a charity store in Salesianergasse  which sells mainly English language books.

The rest of the stuff will probably go into the trash (because it is) unless we can find a home for it.

Now – I will not be opening or vetting the boxes on the basis that it will be too dusty. That is good.

Cate will be doing all the vetting and culling. That is bad.

She is not good at throwing things away.   We still have – for example – mountains of stuff from her high school and university years – and these were not events which took place recently.

In the book department I can envision a scenario where she discovers long lost treasures which have to be re-read.  So the outcome of this may be that we get much more room in the basement but we transfer mountains of stuff back to the apartment to be put on the ‘unread books’ pile.

Anyway – I start this task tomorrow. I will keep you informed. 

8 comments:

  1. I couldn't find a Wikipedia article for Salesianergasse.

    I just got back from traveling, and three days away from Cooper was too long!

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  2. Hmmm....have just decided to put all of the contents of our house into storage. Thinking I'm just delaying a very unpleasant task.

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  3. LOL at this post - it is so like us only we don't have a basement we have a 6m shed !

    I have often thought I would like to get a skip delivered while A is away and just toss everything (well all the useless stuff anyway) from the shed and double garage into the skip and get them to take it away before he gets home. The only little problem is that he knows exactly what he has and where it is - if I threw anything away, he would know and I would be in BIG trouble !!!

    Good luck with the downsizing !
    Have the best Friday ever.

    Me

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  4. Less is more. More is too much.
    Something along that line.
    I learned it the hard way when when we moved from DC. Got so sick and tired of wasting weeks and weeks of my life sorting through old stuff,

    I read somewhere that one should take a bagful of stuff out the door for each bag that comes in. Keeping that in mind has helped quite a bit. Good thing, though, that external hard drives are getting smaller and smaller. *hehe*

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  5. P.S.:
    I am hopeless with books, especially since I learned to order from Amazon (English books are so expensive locally). Dang, that feels like bringing in stuff via underground railroad. ;-)

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  6. esb: It is amazing how much I miss my cats when we are away.

    freefalling: ALL your contents. Now that is serious.

    Me: I thin k everyone has a basement, an attic or a shed. Thanks for the good wishes.

    Merisi: I should let you look at our books - perhaps we could give you our problems.

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  7. replace books by KINDLE then you will save sooooo much space!!

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  8. Rozalin: And how do I get my existing books on Kindle please?

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