Victory Soap v. 2.0

(Refer to this post for context -- ed.)

I decided -- such is my track record -- that I'd better check the bedroom closet floor where it backs against the bathroom closet floor. This meant I had to pull out all the junk that I'd shoved in there when I moved in and never touched again. (I'd squeeze around it to get to my clothes and things -- and there is a reason I haven't worn the stuff hanging in the back of the closet.) Anyway -- this meant also moving the remaining three crates of beloved record albums -- which I now hate with the heat of ten thousand supernovas, by the way. I went to a local vinyl store the other day and asked the guy if they bought old LPs and he gave me the usual "we usually only by stuff in mint condition" line, they all do that. But this place is down on Orange near Ivanhoe and I have no intention of carting three crates of records via bus to the place, so I guess they'll be included in the Goodwill pickup.

I also have too much clothing -- even though I got rid of half of it before I moved. Clearly I should have gotten rid of a lot more. I hardly wear any of the things I have, I tend to wear the same small set of comfortable items. Time to cull.

I also started going through my books. In these days of Amazon, not to mention the fact that public libraries still exist, I don't need my own personal library -- at least not to the extent I have. I am going to try to narrow everything down to only those books that are most beloved -- everything else will get taken to the used book store. I am going to try to narrow the collection down to one box of books. That sounds appalling to the average book lover, but we are stupid -- books aren't the rare things they were when I was a kid. (Really -- we didn't have big chain bookstores in Miami, and the only widely-available, at least on my kid's allowance, books were the dreck they sold in the grocery store, which was even dreckier then than it is now. We did have a couple of bookstores but they catered to adults who read Literature, not kids who read scifi and kid mysteries. There was the Scholastic book ordering thing which came around school, and I got most of my paperbacks from that. And of course, the library, which I haunted and would gladly have moved into. Then Waldenbooks opened on Miracle Mile and it was a revelation. I went there just about every weekend on the bus.) Anyway, I have a lot of books that I read only once and never picked up again, and a lot of some authors whose best work didn't extend to their whole careers.

I've moved the cat litter box into the living room. I had it in the bathroom closet. (No, the water didn't come from the cat box -- I had just cleaned and dried it and refilled it. The old cat does occasionally miss the box -- sometimes I think deliberately -- but less so since I bought one with a cover.) Actually the living room is a shambles now, with stuff all over the place, so it doesn't matter.

I also need to get rid of the typewriters. Well, most of them -- I'll keep one or two. I shouldn't have collected so many -- it was a temporary mania. I am on a typewriter-collecting email list so I'll ask there if anyone wants to take my typewriters off my hands.

I'm excited about getting rid of stuff. I love throwing things away. I don't care how much money they cost -- I'll never get that money back. I'm too lazy and impatient to sell things on Ebay -- that takes too long and is too much like work.

Update: one more thing -- I didn't find any suspicious dampness in the bedroom closet or along the adjacent wall. (My large dresser is against that wall. Fortunately it is on legs, so I can see under it.) I hope that means it's just a small, localized leak and can be easily fixed. The part of the closet floor around the water heater was dry.