hi SubC! I will come check on you today! I have the day off and am also doing stuff, but not what I would have chosen to do. Last night I spent a lot of time making a cake just right for a birthday today. It was in a springform pan. As I was putting it into the oven, it fell apart. The latch just popped right open without me touching it. The batter went everywhere. All over the front, door, inside, drawer of the oven, the cabinets, everywhere. I was devastated. I had to go cry while the oven cooled down. I do not have time nor ingredients to redo it. My son had to come and take the door off the oven and put it in the shower, and I scooped up as much batter as I could and then he put the drawer in the shower. I was cleaning up this mess for 2 hours last night, as it got in all the holes and creases and seals. It was awful. I also had to unclog the bathtub which meant Son had to take the drain apart.

So this morning we pulled the stove out from the wall and I spent another 2 hours cleaning behind it, the sides, the floor, backsplash, inside the oven, then mopped the kitchen. Then son put it back together. It is still not totally done as the stove top needs another cleaning with the burned on stuff. It has been exhausting. I have enough ingredients to make a miniature cake that they wanted. Ddil is going to bake a cake for the rest of the family that is not as complicated.

I am glad it is over. I will go bake the mini cake now. See you again soon.

Lila, thanks for coming by! I was feeling lonely.

I don't think I can help you with the photos and files. Photos and emails are my downfall. But I hope you can free yourself from the old computers soon.

Good luck with your cake!

I don't feel like I have made very much progress in the basement, but a lot of what I have done involved small things and recycling or trash, or even just throwing things in the yard. I have not counted those things, or the craft supplies that I have put in the bag to take to the offsite craft storage (not very much in volume, but lots of little bits and pieces)

About the yard. I opened a box, and then I said out loud to Dh "I have a ginkgo tree. And I have a flower press. And I have a five year old grandson. So I do not need a box of pressed ginkgo leaves that are so old they have turned brown." Dh said "right." So the leaves are in the yard. There are a few other nature materials that are in the yard too.

I moved things around until I could open my filing cabinet. Then I refiled the files that I pulled out of the filing cabinet before I blocked it. I also pulled out a couple of old files that caught my eye, thinned them, and reduced the paper mass of the filing cabinet by about half an inch.

I found three things that could go in the donate pile.

You are getting to work right away, SubC! Good work. I understand saving leaves and such. Somewhere around here I have rose petals from the first flowers some guy gave me as a teenager! If I ever find them, I am going to set them free!

I am also looking at things, thinking, "what will one of my sons think of this item/do with this item if I die and they have to deal with it?" Most of the time, the answer is they would throw it out or donate it. Some things like old letters, papers, and diaries, I would NOT want them to find and read anyway. So I hope to let a lot of that go as I sort this year. I decided I would count something like a letter I have saved for years as 1 item out, since it is not really trash - it is something I have been saving that is taking up space.

I just went and emptied the vacuum which was full, into the dog poo bin, because both my trash cans outside are filled to overflowing. That is one thing that bothers me - when my adult kids who live here fill the trash cans so full, several days before trash day, that I cannot fit my own trash in it. We have had this discussion but they still do it and I am tired of mentioning it. I will ask my son if he can take a load to the dump this week to get caught up on all of that and leave space for me. Frankly I am really ready to live alone. I have never lived alone and was dreading it, but for the first time, I am ready and looking forward to it. Please remind me of this is I ever say I want to add a roommate or let someone move in with me.

Good afternoon for real this time.

Who is paying for the trash service? How many cans can you put out each week?

My mom saved letters from two men she thought about marrying (one match was ended by her potential future mil because of religious differences, and the other guy just kept saying "will you marry me when..." And my dad said "will you marry me now".) she told me where the letters were so I could burn them if anything happened to her. Then the first guy died and she reread his letters and threw them out because they made her sad. After that, she gave all the other letters BACK to the other guy at their 60th high school reunion. Apparently the second guy read the letters and sent her a note saying "thanks for returning my letters. It was interesting to revisit who I was over 50 years ago. No wonder you dumped me, I was a pretentious @$$."

I am up to five things. 4 in the donation bag and one in the recycling because it was a hard thing to let go of because it meant letting go of a project idea I was attached to, not just the object.

I continue to slowly add things to the recycling, trash, and craft thrift bags. And I have a bag to take to school.

I am also finding things that make me cry because they remind me of times I miss or people I have lost. But I have not given up.

SubC, I loved your letters story! How cool. If I come across mine, I will likely read them and toss most.

I pay for the trash service, but TotsDad gives me $200 to help with expenses each month. He pays the internet as well. It is not much, but I want them to be able to have enough to move out! Which should happen before summer I believe. I have had the experience in the past of being calm and tolerant for years, but then at the last month or so (with other people, not him) losing my cool and getting harsh and "putting my foot down" and messing up a relationship, so I am cautious. Seems like people remember the last thing you did or said, and not the months or years of good and calm things that preceded it. I am in the home stretch with my kids living in my home...

I went into the wardrobe cabinet it my bedroom again today. It is a hard cabinet because I have not messed with it in years.

There were a lot of jars, mugs, and glass kitchen items in there from when Teen was breaking all my stuff so I had to lock it all away. That made me sad. I got a dirty storage bin, washed it out, pull those items in it and put them in the storage small bedroom. Yes, I want to get rid of jars. But not those jars, and I cannot get to the jars I want to donate yet. They are behind piles in the storage bedroom.

Anyway that made space in the wardrobe. I needed to take a break after that. There are other things in there like photos, documents like the restraining order against Teen and my divorce papers, and it is a bit overwhelming. Maybe I will move them all to a different space and use the wardrobe for nice things like sweaters and blankets.

I just took all the ornaments off the Christmas tree, and TotsDad came up and took it out to the curb. Now there are needles alllll over the place, living room carpet, table, dining room floor, stairs, entryway, porch, sidewalk...

I will have to clean up the living room tonight at least. It is so many needles I will have to sweep them first or the vacuum will clog. I am glad the tree is gone, though. I am ready.

I need to look for the cake pan I need to make this cake. I do not feel like doing anything!!! Bah!

Hello again, not quite afternoon.

I now have a neat, orderly, organized and sorted recycling area in the basement. I did find a few things that had been put there incorrectly that had to go in the trash, but I also cleaned up a few things from the counter of doom and sorted them 8nformation the correct locations.

I will need to plan some regular trips downtown to drop off everything. I'm not sure how often they will need to be, but 8pm thinking not more than every other month. Maybe only 2x a year once I finish clearing things out.

I am rewarding myself with the last of the berries bought for Christmas treats. After this, it is canned or dried fruit and apples.

Dh is still in the basement working on his train set, so I am going back down to work on my part again.

Good morning SubC, and happy new year! You have some good goals. You inspire me to deal with my own counter of doom, which would be so much better if I did not have two giant PCs sitting on it, with stuff piled all around and on top of them. They have sat there well over a year. Dealing with those 2 PCs and the 3 laptops in my bedroom AND the old/messed up laptop in my living room will be something to complete this year, hopefully before long.

The main thing with these computers/laptops is this massive fear of "losing" some photos, emails, or data, or documents, that are important to me. And, about a year and a half ago, I did start pulling information off of them but now am not sure what is done and what is not. I have some things written on a paper (things I saved on an external drive) but I have this phobia. And they are not connected to a monitor or to the internet, so that means I have to find cords, plug them in on the dining room table, get a monitor and hook it up (do I still have one??), sort files, save them...I have a massive anxiety about duplicates also... and do I save to a drive AND the cloud?? Probably... ugh, it stresses me out so bad.

There are thousands of files on each so I cannot go through and delete all the ones I don't care about, I started and it was overwhelming.

I guess I need to come to terms that THE most important things are photos, second most important are documents, and anything else is not essential.

I just have a terrible fear of deleting something important and I can never get it back.

Well that was a long rant. Anyway, have to make a cake for a family birthday this week, and need to vacuum (d0g hair). Wanted to walk but it is sleeting.

Back later!