Day: March 9, 2006

The idea behind packing for a move is that you get rid of all the crap you don’t want/need anymore and only take the good stuff. A purging, if you will. On that front, our move was a complete and utter failure. We took just about everything. That means the onus has now been shifted to the unpacking portion of the move. Once again, oh joy.

But it does mean that more stuff is being tossed with ease. There’s far less well-we-might-need-it-in-the-future talk, because – to use a corny expression – the future is now. There’s no need to save something in case we could use it in our house, because we’ve got the stinkin’ house, so if we can use it we will. And if we’re just holding onto it for sentimental reasons, we’ve got plenty of boxes and closets to fill.

One site has really helped out with the whole house cleaning thing, though. And that is Freecycle. Sandy had introduced me to it, and I was intrigued by the idea of picking up some things that weren’t important enough to bother with an exchange of money for. Instead, it’s turned out to be an incredible resource for getting rid of all the things I never threw out because I thought it would be wasteful. Before we moved I was able to quickly get rid of an old 17″ Mag monitor (some of you may remember that one since it dates back to my college years), an old 9″ monitor, and an old air conditioner (still working, but we got a new one for cheap). Now I’ve already been able to get rid of most of the boxes and packing material from the move as well as the extra firm mattress the previous owner had left for us. Sure, I’ve thrown out plenty of stuff for bulk pickup, too – but that’s only for the real damaged goods. This stuff still works.

Now I’m also assembling all sorts of old computer parts, electronics, and telephones that will either be freely distributed or sold at a yard sale. Just about anything that isn’t nailed down is free game for redistribution. Eventually we’ll be able to completely minimize our lives and go back to eating off milk crates and sitting on bean bags! Take that, capitalism!

Yesterday morning, Lisa got up to take a shower (her schedule is based on the classes she teaches, and thus gets up earlier than me somedays and later on others). I tried to sleep in some as I was up late doing something stupid, undoubtedly. But my efforts were thwarted as she quietly woke me up – the cold water wasn’t turning off. Oh joy.

The upstairs bathroom in our place was an afterthought. And it shows. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE having a second full bath in our bedroom. But it was not designed well, and there was some obvious skimping of money (the inspector was sure it was not done by a contractor). No biggie, we hope to remodel down the line when we have real money. But I decided quickly on that we’d probably have to at least replace the fixtures in the shower as they just didn’t work well – way too loose and couldn’t be tightened.

Well, the cold water handle must have completely stripped itself inside, because nothing I did could get it to turn the water off. I took the handle off, tried to turn the plastic thingy, then the metal thingy. Finally I took a scraper to it and whacked off the cover from the wall. No dice – there was no access to the pipes from any angle. So I killed the water main. “Great!” exclaims Lisa in triumph. “No,” I said, “Now we have no water.”

After trying some of the valves in the bathroom itself, I finally restore the water and start hunting around the basement. With my incredible detective skills (and the fact that half of them didn’t turn) I finally turned something and heard the water stop running. Much to my amazement, we still had water on the first floor. I managed to just kill the cold water upstairs – who would have thought I would accomplish what I set out.

Now life is back to normal – we just ignore the shower in our bedroom for now. Two months ago I swore I would let stuff like this happen in my home. Now I’m wondering how long I’ll be able to last before breaking down and admitting it needs to be fixed. Probably once I find out where else I shut off water…