Sore and Tired

Today we shoveled and raked and leveled 7 yards of soil.

The yard looks great.

The children need showers.

We can’t move.

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Those of you who know us will attest to three things:

1) The basement will never be finished. Ever. It may possibly be usable in the near future, but it will never be finished. Until it is finished, stacks of stuff destined for the basement rule the upstairs.

2) We are drowning in clutter. We constantly fight this battle, and we seem to take endless loads of boxes to the Goodwill, but no matter how much we get rid of there is still too much waiting to ambush us when our backs are turned.

3) We’d far rather spend a day planning how to do something, with cool charts, graphs, lists and systems, than actually do anything productive to finish the basement or fight clutter.

So, ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you….

The Wonderfulpages.com Decluttering Flowchart PDF

Jocularity aside, this is actually a serious piece of work that is the result of literally hours of discussion. We were discussing with the kids how to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. Explaining to a 7 year old which items in his overflowing “stuff” drawer to keep is difficult. Deciding what things in my “stuff” drawer to keep is difficult. Hence, a flowchart. The chart should be good for both items and paperwork, not so good for books. We’re working on the one for books, but that one’s a bit more complex. We care more about some of our books than about most of our stuff. :)

Sentimental clutter is the big killer. We’ve decided to keep only one item from each important stage of our lives (you decide what the important stages are) and take photos of the rest before getting rid of them. Harsh? Yes. Necessary with 7 bodies in 1200 square feet 24 hours a day? Yes.

Some clarifications:
“Assign a place” means to decide exactly where the permanent home for this item is. If that place doesn’t exist (on the shelf that won’t be hung until after the room is painted) then a temporary specific place is found. Like “in the box for stuff that will go on that shelf”, not “back on the top of my dresser with this other stuff I don’t know what to do with”.

“File or place in secondary storage” means to place the paper in the proper place in the filing cabinet, not in a pile of stuff to be filed later. You and I both know it won’t.

“Display, file or secondary storage after documenting” is for keepsakes. Displaying on a shelf or in a photo frame, filing special papers, storing things you want to keep but not display. “After documenting” means that the reason that the thing is special should be typed or written on a card and stored with the item, or if it won’t destroy the value of the item, written right on the item. (All of our Christmas decorations have the owner, giver and year marked on them in superfine sharpie).

“Discard” means “get it out of my house”. It may mean trash, it may mean recycling, it may mean Goodwill, it may mean the neighbours, it may mean someone else in your family, but get it out of there before you change your mind.

“Will you be able to find it elsewhere when you need it?” means “Can I look this information up on the internet easily if I ever need it?” for paperwork, or “Is there another more generic tool that I also own that can do this job?” for gadgets. You get the idea.

Tell us about your own decluttering methods!

The bake element in our Maytag stove burned out last week. MrsPages was getting ready to cook brunch for company (and we had company coming the next morning too) when there was a bright flash and *foom* *fizzle* the element died.

MrsPages ingeniously managed to cook the meal by turning the broiler on until the oven reached temperature, then turning it off, then turning it on again when it cooled. What a pain. So without further ado, I present:

How to replace the lower bake element in a Maytag Oven

You’ll need:

• A replacement element. I got mine for $35 from Reliable Parts. Any generic appliance store should have them in stock. The same element is used across many models, so they’re pretty common.
  

• A Pair of pliers (I used needlenose)
• A medium philips screwdriver (cross shaped head)
• A small slot screwdriver

Step 1. Unplug it. If it’s wired in to the wall, turn the breaker off.

Step 2. Make sure it’s unplugged. Don’t laugh, go double check. Really.

Step 3. Make absolutely sure it’s unplugged. You really don’t want to be messing with 220 volts. Honest.

Step 4. Pull the oven out and remove the half dozen or so screws that keep the back cover on.



Step 5. Find the wires that connect to the lower bake element.

Step 6. Remove the clips from the element. You’ll likely need a pair of pliers. Be gentle, just take a firm hold and wiggle while you tug the connector off.

Step 7. Open the oven door and remove the 2 screws holding the element in place inside the oven.

Step 8. Inside the oven, remove the broken element (just pull it straight out of the holes in the back oven wall). If the element is badly broken there may be white dust coming out. Be careful, this dust is apparently rather toxic.

Step 9. Insert the ends of the new element through the holes in the back oven wall and replace the two screws to hold the new element in place.

Step 10. Back behind the oven, using the small slot screwdriver, slightly bend open the crimped part of the connector on the wires. You might not need to do this. If you can manage the next step without it, don’t bother.

Step 11. Slide the connectors on to the ends of the new element and lightly crimp the connector with the pliers. Give the wire a tug to make sure it’s on securely. Lots of heat and electricity flow through this wire, and a loose connector can work its way off and be dangerous.

Step 12. Replace the back cover and all the screws that hold it on.

Step 13. Take this opportunity to clean the dried crud off the sides of the oven.

Step 14. Plug the oven in or turn the breaker back on and test it. Use an oven thermometer to check that the oven reaches the proper temperature and stays there.

If it doesn’t work at this point, call a repair person. The element burning out can damage the thermostat or other components. At least you’ve saved yourself the cost of this part of the repair!

If it does work, pat yourself on the back for having avoided $100-an-hour labour costs and 100 percent parts markup for a 10 minute do-it-yourself job!

I have always been a granola-crunching, paper-recycling, environmental-worrying, semi-activist. Though there are seven of us in our home, we put out less than one can of garbage each week. (It should go down even more when I start composting in the spring.) We also put out five or six blue bins of recycling. We shop second hand, only replace items that we can’t fix, and generally try to live simple lives.

Yet I am constantly being challenged and inspired by those who are doing so much more. MrPages has already mentioned No Impact Man on a previous post. I also follow the stories of Beth at Fake Plastic Fish who is trying to eliminate her plastic consumption, and the Dervaes Family at Path to Freedom, who are living off the grid in the middle of Pasadena, California!

With such heroes from which to gleen insight, I present my first, I hope, of many “Steps to Green” (MrPages says I should trademark it!)

Anyway.

Reclaimed, Reusable, Multipurpose Gift Wrap:

A friend gave me a bag of fabric scraps. I found a bunch of squares that might have been meant for a quilt. Beth’s post about Christmas wrap, and her link to Furoshiki got my creative juices flowing. The result is a smallish kerchief-like section of cloth that can be used to wrap our Christmas gifts. I used the Furoshiki fold for flat objects and then just to be sure it stayed wrapped en route I secured it with some yarn (which is also reclaimed.)

I’m dreaming of a green Christmas!

No pictures today, because they’ll be the same as yesterday morning’s.

Painting went so much faster with Snowy and Ash and myself and the five LittlePainters, but yesterday and today it has been just me. I got the first coat of ceiling paint on the main section of the ceiling. I got two-thirds of the second, and last coat, on today before I ran out of paint.

The LittlePages have been real troopers this week. Page1 made lunch and dinner on Thursday, Page2 helped with the LittlestPage, Page 3 helped Dad with some framing and Page4 lended his cheerful chatter to keep us all going. All five of them chipped in to help paint the walls. But they are pretty much done with amusing themselves for such long periods of unsupervised time. A child left to himself brings shame to his mother. It’s time to get back to regular routine!

And so as we end the week long attack, we are both excited about what has been done, a little defeated by what still needs to be done, and sore all over!

We’ve talked about trying to get up a little earlier everyday and try to maintain the momentum, but we’ll see.

A painting is never finished–it simply stops in interesting places. (Paul Gardner)

Whoohoo! Ceiling in the main area is finished and thanks to Snowy and Ash’s unceasing paintitude, there is primer and a first coat on walls and ceiling! That’s a bigger job than it seems because painting the tongue and groove pine involves a first trip across with a brush painting the grooves, then a trip across with the roller.

The place looks brighter. The ceiling looks higher. I can almost picture moving bookcases and furniture in…. We couldn’t be more thrilled. Six years of waiting and working coming to a head!

MrsPages and the LittlePages are going to be sanding, filling and painting today. (And much of next week, likely)

Here’s the bit of ceiling that I have left to put boards on, at the bottom of the stairs. Hopefully finished today, but the corners and angles make for slow going.

The ceiling is simply Behr Ultra Pure Flat Ceiling White. The walls are a beautiful barely-off-white Behr PPL-50 “Table Linen”. It’s just tinted enough to see a difference when it’s up against the white ceiling and trim. It really warms the place up nicely.

I made my goal for yesterday, which was to get the ceiling up in the main area. I have a narrow strip to fill at the edge, then the ceiling in the little area over the stairs. That’s the goal for today.

Snowy and Ash are on their way over to help start painting! Whoohoo! We’re painting the basement!!

Pics, before paint prep:

Note the rebounder exerciser that the kids have been expending energy on while we work… (”Hey Dad! I can almost touch the ceiling!”)

A slow start yesterday, after discovering that the table saw was mis-aligned. The blade was perfectly square to the table when it was vertical, but when it was tilted to 45 degrees (to cut the ends of the ceiling boards) one end of the board was a 16th of an inch longer than the other, so no two cuts matched up. I spent at least 2 hours attempting to adjust my not-very adjustable saw and got it to within a reasonable tolerance, I think.

Mid afternoon the ceiling work started up and I got a good amount finished. Hopefully get the main area done today.

Pictures:

Looks worse than it is. In the first shot the white plastic drawer-things are going to the church tomorrow and the plywood is getting picked up by some happy FreeCycler as soon as they get here. Hooray for people taking our junk away for us!

“He who wants to change the world should already begin by cleaning the dishes.”
Paul Carvel quotes (Belgian Writer and Editor, b.1964)

Or perhaps by cleaning the basement; which is good news because that is what we spent yesterday doing. Hopefully we can pull out the hammers today.

Day Two Photos:

And here’s the pile of stuff to go to the Goodwill so far:

We bought a fixer upper ten years ago. We hoped that by now it would be all fixed up. It’s not. Life happens and somehow spending time with friends and family and church and mission seemed and still seems far important than hammering and painting.

That said, we are a growing family and half of our house is not currently usable. The basement has been in progress for about six years. We ripped it out when we discovered electrical fires in the walls.

This week MrPages has taken time off work so we can see what we can do. The calendar appears clear. Friends and family know we’ve tried to guard this week for work. So we’ll give it a go and see what the Lord might help us do!

Day One Photos: