Your Home is…

Francine Jay via Lisa Bearnes Richey

I think these nice folks were looking at ME when they wrote this reminder….

I AM making progress in my efforts to tackle one area at a time, take everything out, look through it, decide what to keep, what to donate, what to throw away, and THEN how to reorganize what is left after a thorough cleaning. I figure I should go through things this way at least once each 30 years or so – just to keep up to date…

My husband is getting me a computer. He HATES my MAC. He’s a retired computer analyst, used to knowing everything about computers. Lately he is realizing that the field is growing faster than he can keep up. He hasn’t given up, and he wants to be able to fix any problems I have when my computer is getting wonky. It really makes him angry – feeling inadequate – when he can’t begin to solve any problems on the MAC, so he finally convinced me to let him build a new computer for me – a PC with Windows 10.

He has promised me that he’ll build it on the counter beside me, taking all the time he wants to bend Windows 10 to his will, making sure all is good before we CAREFULLY move my stuff from the MAC to the PC. When we’ve tested everything and we’re sure we have everything we need from the computer I’m using now, we’ll make the switch. We’ll wipe the MAC and sell it, since it’s a good computer and fairly up to date on what is being sold now.

To this end, we decided to move the printer over beside one of our file cabinets. The printer is wider than the file cabinet, so he built an extender for the counter top and we put the printer on it. Now I have a lot more usable space for working.

I also discovered, to my horror, a truly contest-winning amount of dust and grime that was living under and behind the printer and my MAC screen, among the rivers of wiring that string along the counter. This will be my project of the day – to move stuff from one side to the other, thoroughly clean the counter top, and then figure out the best way to arrange things so I can reach them easily and the area can be cleaned again in another 30 years or so…

In the past we’ve always moved often enough that we were forced to go through things, being ruthless about what we would pay to move and what needed to be purged. We’ve lived in our home on the top of the ridge line for over 30 years.  Internalizing the quote above, that ‘Your Home in LIVING SPACE, not Storage Space” hits me right between the eyes. The two nice ladies took one look at me and said, “Linda Lewis, this means YOU!”

At least I can look to various places in our home and see that progress has been made. I’ll just keep tackling one area at a time, healing things as I go. :0)