What short term goal do you want to put out there so you stick to it?

I will park a car in my garage for the first time in eight years by Christmas.

@JLeslie I have plans in place for baking double chocolate Fudge brownies once a week for the next 3 weeks and sticking to it!

I will acquire a functioning vehicle.

(we’re actively searching)

Good plan @JLeslie. I will finish a paper I’m working on. It keeps being put to the side because of other priorities. I need to finish it. So I’ll have it finished by 31 December.

I will go through all of the family pictures, photos, and portraits, and destroy the ones as I promised my parents that I would do. I will pass along to the next generation, the pictures of them as kids, as also instructed. I will get rid of my own pictures, etc., so that none of them get collected by people who make insulting jokes about them in greeting cards. Or hang them in restaurants with other antiques to watch thousands of people chew their freaking food with their mouths open. Or better yet, get purchased at a flea market in a box for a whole dollar! I might ammend one promise, by giving to the oldest nephew a picture of each of the relatives for at least three generations back. Stipulating they be destroyed once he scans and watermarks them. Then I will open a bottle of Asti-Spumante and toast them all.

I will spend 5 full minutes each day in a different area, organizing or tossing out stuff I don’t need. I will do this while the woodburning stove is going so I can irretrievably discard burnable items that are personal. Furthermore I will write on the calendar a daily estimate of the weight discarded. (Normal trash will not be included.)
I will also wear my activity band daily (or until it breaks) and maintain a record of attaining my daily goals: 10000 steps, 120 minutes active, 4 miles. I know there will be days I cannot meet them all but I will accept that “failure” without shame.
And I’m pushing the button…. Now!

I vow to not swear on these pages, you better fucking believ…oh poo!!

To become the next Hokage, dattebayo.

@majorrich I’m guessing that your garage is so packed on all sides with stuff, it resembles a clogged artery?

I have several boxes of family photos that I need to sort. I took custody of the photos when I cleaned-out my mother’s house. I’d like to make a photo album for myself, one for my brother, and envelopes for various other people. The boxes are wrapped in plastic and carefully stored, but they give me the “evil eye” whenever I enter that storage area. I’d like to tackle this project during the slow, quiet week between Christmas and New Years Day.

Yup. Pretty much a giant blood clot trying to enter the house. Combining my parents house and mine. Mom and Dads 53 years of accumulated stuff and my Wife and I 27 years. Enough books to populate a small library. And nick-jacks galore.

Oh jeez…mine is committing to lacing, straping and velcro-ing on a damn ankle splint, faithfully, for the next several months after spraining the same ankle, twice now, in 8 weeks. Major PITA! Trying to get this damn thing on first thing in the morning, but..I must do it or risk another blow out. Getting old sucks!

@LuckyGuy Have me over to help, I am mistress organizer and thrower awayer here. I shall have your space tidy and in order in no time at all. Just say no to hoarding! Remember the mantra, if you haven’t worn it or used it in the last year, pitch it or donate it! lol ;-)

Oh @Coloma I desperately need an uninvolved person to make me pitch stuff! It will hurt but pitching has to happen.

@Coloma, @majorrich I too need an involved person. I managed to toss out and burn about 20 pounds of stuff today. I will continue until the end of the year. .
My history. Married bought a ranc house wit a 2000 sq ft basement. Father moved to Florida in 1981 leaving his household items at my place. I took an overseas assignment that was supposed to be temporary so everything went into storage – ended up staying 4 years so we accumulated a second household . 2 kids and all their junk. Came home accumulated more. Took another overseas assignment and accumulated more. One son divorced..More stuff. Father died – more stuff. And then my business. I started in my basement and it grew… out of control. Now I have an office and employees. but the basement still has tons of stuff. I have not had a car in my garage in 6 years.
I have a 2 person flight simulator if anyone needs one. Anyone? Anyone?

@LuckyGuy LOL…a flight simulator. Well…here’s an idea, have an open basement sale one weekend and go around and have people make you offers on stuff. You’d be surprised how much stuff others will buy. @majorrich Yes, pitching has to hapeen, maybe have a garage/yard sale too then anything that doesn’t sell gets trashed or taken to the local thrift store.

I am trying to help a friend get organized this year.
I have helped her get it together several times but things just build up again. He problem is that A. She is a compulsive shopper and buys multiple items if they are a good deal, not discerning whether or not she really needs or will use 6 beach umbrellas, so they get propped up in a corner and there they remain, forever. lol B. She has too much stuff in her space, and C. she doesn’t pick things up or put things away, so things are always strewn about in total chaos.

I am far from OCD abut anything but I do like a tidy space and a clutter free environment. The dust can wait but nobody needs 35 coffee mugs or 150 canning jars collecting dust because you “might” use them someday. One thing I have noticed about clutter bugs is that they, often, especially women, attach a lot of sentimentality to objects from their past. Saving every card, invitation, little trinket that has a memory. I am just the opposite, give me a card, I look at it, appreciate the sentiment and then, in the trash it goes. haha

Yep. A flight simulator. The cockpit has two high back automotive bucket seats. I’d give it away! Unfortunately it is the size of a small car and easily weighs a ¼ ton. It came from a NASA clean-out. Anyone? Anyone?

WOW! All I did was put my snowblower in the yard shed and box up books that need to be sorted or pitched and I made a visable dent! Also found some tools I was missing, needed badly and bought replacements for. (epic fail) Total space gained, 1 fender in the garage.

@majorrich Great news! (Need a flight simulator?).
I attacked a corner of my work bench and found a couple of tools that might belong to you. I also did a quick oil change on my van so I can begin whittling down all the oil filters and 5 gallon jugs of 5–20 oil my son got for me at cost. Rather than was them I burned my oily clothes and rags. I also discarded papers from a tech show and car show.

Adding in: I’m going to catalogue all of my books on LibraryThing with my nifty new scanner.

This toy is dangerous in my hands.

@Seek What kind of a scanner is it? I have tons of books and keep thinking I will catalog them “some time”. I would have used an Excel spreadsheet. ls your toy better/faster?

@LuckyGuy – It’s a CueCat. My techie friends are making fun of me for being so excited about it, because apparently it is old news. This doesn’t surprise me and I frankly don’t care.

I spent ages looking for an Android app to maintain my book inventory to replace my Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was fine, but so much work to maintain that I gave up on it, and it is now hopelessly outdated. I must have tried 20 different inventory apps and they were all painfully slow to use.

I received the CueCat in the mail on Friday afternoon. I have so far entered into my LibraryThing Catalog 541 books (it is now Sunday morning and I haven’t entered anything since last night)

The CueCat will pull up, through LibraryThing’s interface, any hardcover or trade size paperback books with a barcode, Mass Market paperbacks with a barcode on the inside cover work, too. Mass Market paperbacks with only an outside barcode have to be pulled up by manually entering the ISBN. Obviously, anything without a barcode needs to be pulled up manually as well. Still better than inputting everything myself in Excel.

So far, I’ve been able to pull up almost everything through the Amazon search. For the Tarzan paperbacks from OMGyears ago, I had to use the less-complete Library of Congress catalog data.

I GOT A CAR TODAY!!

This is a really big deal because my old beater – an 88 Crown Vic – officially died over a year ago, and my husband’s truck – which I can’t drive because it’s a stick with an attitude – is in the shop.

It’s a 2000 Taurus station wagon, making it the youngest car I’ve ever owned (not counting my husband’s Isuzu, which was his and not mine. haha. This is in MY name.) and since we drove it off of a ghetto lot for $800 you can expect some questions on how to do some minor repairs over the next few days and weeks.

WOOT Way to go Seek!

I seem to remember CueCats were pretty cool in concept but had a hardware thing that added or edited what it scanned so as to make them about useless as barcode scanners. I’m sure they found a workaround by now.

@Seek Yay! Cars, the most stressful damn machines we need.
I took mine in for an oil change today and they found rodent poop and acorn husks and all sorts of rat crap in my engine compartment. Must be why one of my fuel lines burst a few months ago and spewed out all the gas on the highway. WTF!
We are battling rats here and now they have invaded my car.

Cars, such a major PITA. lol

Grooooooossss…

I’m really stoked about this car. I generally hate driving. OK, I really hate driving, but not having the freedom of movement has been a major PITA for ages.

I’m going to treat this thing like a newborn baby and force it to give me 200K miles.

Today I found a bounty of empty boxes that may allow part of another fender and partial hood into the garage. Looking at the scene, I think I could more easily fit my Miata in well before her Civic. The Mercedes…. Well. gonna take a spell.

Yay, progress!!

OK, So how did everyone do? I missed working on the slack line only 2 times. I still can’t do it for more than a few seconds but I am a lot better.
I managed to get rid of about 300 pounds of stuff: old papers, oil, flower pots, useless radio equipment, clothes, wood arrows, an inaccurate scale, and some project pieces I will never use.
I donated some clothes, gave an unused tire and wheel (with working pressure sensor) to a friend. I Freecycled an IBM Selectric typewriter with boxes of accessories. (It was claimed in less than an hour.)

This only scratched the surface. I will continue to do more today – and use the damn slack line .

The flight simulator is still available. Anyone?... Anyone?... Hello? Is this thing on?

@luckyguy – is there a children’s museum nearby you could donate the flight simulator to?

I was a giant slug for the last week, but am spurred on by my friend Luckyguy’s progress! I’ll probably go out there this afternoon and re-stack some boxes. Literally could probably get a car in doing it that way, but that would be cheating and just putting things off. Having my cat die really took wind from my sails. I didn’t realize just how much until the last couple of days.

Would simulator time count as stick time towards a Pilots license? Kinda sniffing at a Light Sport license because I don’t think I would pass a GP physical. :)

@majorrich Yes. My son got his license. I forget the details but it was something like sim time is worth ½ air time and you can’t have more than ½ your time from sim.
You need a magic FAA USB stick which keeps all your info and logs your flights. It was an outrageous price. ~($1000). When he was looking it up, he showed me a note that said “Don’t even think about it.”

I wanted to play and try doing loops and flying under bridges and buzzing shopping malls but nooooo… he wouldn’t let me. He was afraid big brother would know. I mean, what’s the point of having it at your house if you can’t try experiments? You can tell you’s the adult in the family. The damn thing takes up a full parking space in my garage.

I also have some modified MC-6 maneuverable parachutes. Hey, you never know. ;-)

I’ve been following this question but hadn’t chimed in until today. 2016 is the year I hope to get a better handle on my health issues, and lead a more (physically) comfortable life. I got a new desk chair for Christmas, so that was step one. Today, I’m seeing a rheumatologist for testing to see if we can’t get to the bottom of it all. Wish me luck!

Two lamps and a box of books today. Depending on the car, I have the car in the garage up to the mirrors. It physically hurts me to throw out books.

Does your local library accept donations? Mine has a (terribly dangerous) used bookstore that it uses to fund community activities.