Six (and a half) lessons learned

2/14/10 Plastic bin, given away; three phones and a mile of telephone wire, trashed

I sincerely hope, Dear Readers, that many of you are undertaking radical downsizing yourselves. To help you in your journey, here are a few lessons learned today.

1) One man's trash is anther man's treasure. We have a responsibility to try for Reuse over Recycle. It's more work to find a new owner for something than just to throw it away, but it's the better way to go. Whatever it is, someone might want it.

2) Lean on your friends and family to take stuff off your hands. As we enjoyed our weekend with Meyrick and Donna, Donna asked where I got the plastic bin that I scoop the used cat litter into. The bin is actually one of the plastic containers that the litter we used to buy came in. I downsized all of my unused bins months ago and wrote, I thought, one of my more inspired blogs.

3) Organization can lead to hoarding (and that's bad). Underneath my workbench, stacked neatly among other neatly labeled boxes, was a neat cat litter bin with the word "Phones" printed neatly on the side. Inside were neatly packed phones and neatly bundled phone cords. It was all done so neatly, it looked like it should stay there forever.

4) One downsize often leads to other downsizes (and that's good). So, here was a perfectly good cat litter bin I could give to Donna, but I now needed to deal with what was inside it.

5) Sometimes you've just got to throw stuff out. At least one of those phones was broken, which I knew when I stored it. The others were so old, I'm reasonably confident nobody would want them. So, they got tossed. (Except one that belonged to my parents that they may want back; I need to check. Thus, lesson 5B) Rarely are downsizes cut and dry.)

6) Downsizing feels good. The bin went to Connecticut with Donna, the phones and cords went to the dump, and now I have another empty space in that confounded basement.

With those tips in mind, you are hereby challenged to downsize something of your own today. Let me know what it is, and any lessons you learned that I may pass along to my other Dear Readers. Can't wait to hear from you...

Not ready for prime time

2/13/10 Ridiculously old can of primer paint, consumed

Does primer go bad? I sure hope not.

This is actually a case where my hoarding totally paid off. This mostly-empty can of primer was left behind, like so many other treasures, by the beloved Andrew Zipkin when he sold the house to us. It has sat in a box in the corner of the basement all of these years with no project to devote itself to. Until now.

I actually started the thoroughly unfun project of repainting our entire basement/entry before Christmas, but progress has ground to a halt with the arrival of a baby.

With Joanna's family here for the weekend, however, I was freed up to return to the job, and did so with all the gusto I could muster. I had purchased fancy paint that claimed "no primer needed," but like so much offered up by corporate America, this product fell short of the marketing campaign.

Most of the problem can be attributed to the fact that I'm trying to cover the dark industrial gray trim (probably a color choice of the aforementioned Mr. Zipkin), with some paint that is just far enough away from white to have a fancy name like "Snowbound Starlight." The name also allows the paint to be sold at prices that do, indeed, make me look to the heavens.

It became clear on my first attempt that, just as the label said, primer is not needed. As long as I didn't mind doing at least four coats with the fancy paint.

That stuff is expensive, so forget that.

Thus, the decade-old primer was called into action, and, as far as I can tell, it has done its job.

Of course, with Meyrick and Donna leaving tomorrow, it may be months before I have time to finish painting and actually find out for myself.

Sense of deja vu; sense of deja vu

2/12/10 Three pairs of old cross country skis, given away

Happy Birthday, Jason!

How's this for a strange coincidence?

Yesterday, a good friend of mine, named Jason M., celebrated this birthday. He's one of the few men I've ever worked with in primary education, a field dominated by women. He's a dedicated and analytical teacher, a fine outdoorsman, and the father of an adoring daughter.

Today, a good friend of mine, named Jason M., celebrated this birthday. He's one of the few men I've ever worked with in primary education, a field dominated by women. He's a dedicated and analytical teacher, a fine outdoorsman, and the father of an adoring daughter.

Yep, two different guys who share much in common beyond the same name and who were born 24 hours apart. Plus, they're both great guys.

Yesterday, as you may have read, to celebrate Jason Martin's birthday I sent him a funny book.

Today, to mark Jason Manjourides' birthday, I handed off three pairs of cross country skis. The skis aren't actually for Jason, but for his friend, who just opened a restaurant. I have not yet had the chance to visit The Foothills Grille in Bethel, Maine, but Jason assures me that the food is excellent. The owner is a friend of his, and he's interested in the skis as a possible decoration.

I, of course, am hopeful that this might be my first downsize that ends up on the wall of a local business. That would be cool.

In fact, once the skis are properly displayed, I should offer to take Jason and Jason there for a birthday dinner.

What to Expect When You're Downsizing

2/11/10 Copy of What to Expect When You're Expected, given away

Happy Birthday, Jason!

This is a lethal combination:

1) I'm trying to get rid of stuff.

2) One of my best friends is having a birthday.

3) He's also about to have a baby.

Talk about the perfect storm of downsizing! Knowing Jason's particular sense of humor, I mailed off to him the absolutely hysterical What to Expect When You're Expected. Be sure you read that title carefully, so as not to confuse it with the book it's parodying, the classic (and classically boring) What to Expect When You're Expecting. There's a slight difference in tone, best explained by watching this trailer.

Pregnancy is a time full of anxiety and concern, even for the guy. There are a million things to worry about and another million to learn. Fortunately, any time I was feeling overwhelmed I'd read a few more pages of this book, which is created by the same folks who gave us America: The Book and I Am America, and So Can You! If you're a Daily Show or Stephen Colbert fan and haven't read these books, RUN out and get them right now. If you're not a Daily Show or Stephen Colbert fan, I can honestly say I don't understand you.

I own my own copy of America: The Book (purchased at the library for $1) and won't be downsizing it anytime soon, but I'm willing to let go of What to Expect When You're Expected, if only because I know Jason and Jenny can use the laughs at this point in their pregnancy.

Besides, after one pregnancy, I'm not so sure I want to go back to that experience anytime soon. Right, Joanna?

Baby shower (and tub)

2/10/10 Basket full of baby items, given away

How's this for quick turn around: My son is less than four weeks old and I'm already downsizing baby items. Better hide your favorite stuff, kid, cause I'm coming to get it.

One of Joanna's colleagues, in addition to being a teacher, is also a plumber. She came over a few years ago when I got seriously over my head in the do-it-yourself bathroom remodel project, rescuing me in my failed attempt to install a new bathtub. She sacrificed her entire Saturday giving us back the ability to bathe and shower in our own home.

Anyone who visits our house for the first time quickly hears how I redid both bathrooms "on my own." The story of Michelle's role in the tub installation gets buried in my retelling. Sorry, Michelle.

But, as a small token of thanks as well as a well-wish to someone else who is about to become a parent for the first time, Joanna drove a basket of stuff over to Michelle's today. She's due later in the spring, giving her plenty of time to read the handy birth books and practice with those excess diapers we downsized to her.

We even threw in an extra jar of soothing bath soak, so Michelle can relax in her tub both before and after the baby arrives.

Of course, she's always welcome to use our tub, too, since without her we'd still be doing sponge baths in front of the kitchen sink. That's fine for babies, but no good for us new parents.

In a meeting

2/9/10 Two children's books (Math Curse & An American Plague), given away

My paternity leave came to an end today and I returned to work. I'm incredibly thankful that I was able to take three weeks off to be at home with Joanna as we began to discover how to be parents.

This morning I abandoned my diaper-changing duty to return to the traditional role of bread winner (although Joanna makes more than I do).

What a way to return to school: I spent the day in -- this is absolutely true -- seven and a half hours of meetings.

I would simply like a show of hands, Dear Readers, from those of you who work in the business world. How many of you have ever spent 7 1/2 hours in meetings in one day? I'm not counting lunch, I'm not counting the downtime between them, I'm only talking about the actual clocked meeting time.

I'm an educator. I thought we were supposed to teach kids, not talk amongst ourselves.

One downsizing benefit of meeting with teachers is that it's really easy to give stuff away. I'm working on a theory that teaching has a higher percentage of hoarders than any other profession. I guess working in an environment that is low-pay, non-profit, and material-intensive leads to that kind of behavior.

Whatever it is, it helps anyone who's trying to downsize. (As, by the way, you all should be doing.)

I walked into my final meeting of the day, held up two books and said, "Who wants 'em?" They were gone in thirty seconds. Thank you Diane and Jason!

See, even though I hardly saw a child all day, I can at least say the meetings were productive.

Picture a land of plenty...

2/8/10 Two photographs (and, by extension, a film canister), recycled

Isn't it amazing that I lead a life of such plenty that I hold onto items that have little or no value and, indeed, I have no interest in.

Examples abound, but here's the latest one.

I've apparently owned a random roll of film, about which I couldn't care less, for about nine years. I say "apparently" because I really have little recollection of this roll of film. I have vague memories of seeing it in the back of a drawer from time to time, but it basically became invisible.

Think about that: I own things that I can ignore. How many of the world's people can say that? What percentage of our earth's population has so much stuff that they can afford to neither fully know what some of it is nor care about much of it. I find it in one sense odd and, at another extreme, rather obscene.

At any rate, I could well have let that roll of film bounce around in my desk drawer for many more years and would undoubtedly have packed it up and moved it to our next house, just as I moved it here when I came from New York.

Thankfully, the Downsize Challenge continues to open my eyes, and I realized that it was time to deal with that roll. Last week I took it to the local Rite Aid to be developed. It's been so long since I dropped off film at a drug store that I needed to ask the lady for help in filling out the envelope.

Honestly, as the time approached to pick up the film, I started to have a little anxiety about what I was going to find. I could hardly remember owning a 35mm camera, and I certainly couldn't put my finger on what I might have photographed with it. Especially given that I didn't have it developed at the time. Very strange.

I picked it up with Joanna and Chase in the car and, to be frank, was glad that the little guy prevented Joanna from coming into the store with me. At least I'd get a look at the photos on my own first, with the opportunity to ditch anything incriminating before she saw them.

Hey, I was once a wild and crazy guy.

The result turned out to be both more strange and more mundane than anything I could have imagined.

Only two shots. One, dark and grainy (clearly the flash didn't go off) of me putting on a bike helmet in the hallway of Joanna's Harlem apartment. The other, of Joanna in front of a bridge somewhere in Brooklyn. We think it's Brooklyn, although that's not the Brooklyn Bridge.

The pictures are clearly from a Five Borough New York City bike tour we did sometime around the summer of 2001.

Questions abound. Why did we only take these two pictures? Why take 35mm pictures at all, since I had my digital camera by then? Why didn't I develop the film when I took it out of the camera? What in the heck ever happened to the camera?

From a downsizing perspective, the most significant question is also the easiest to answer.

Should I have so much stuff that some of it becomes invisible filler, just occupying air in a symbolic celebration of excess?

The answer, of course, is no. Good riddance.