Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Simple Pleasure ~ Getting Organised

(note: if you see a new poll off to the right, please ignore it until Thursday morning when I'll explain it)

Last week, while Charity went on a date (to a concert), I took advantage of a quiet apartment to do some closet reorganisation.

I try to keep clothes organised but it doesn't always (ever?) work.  I want dresses, skirts, tops together.  I want new things, things I've never worn, near the front of the closet.  Within groups, I want favourites in front of not-so-favourites.

Instead, things get jumbled together.  When I see something I don't think I've worn (or it still has tags on it), I put it on a chair to Deal With Later.  This means a pile of nice, unworn clothing wrinkling on a chair.

I bought a new hanger that holds four skirts ($4 at Marshalls).  I push the limit by putting two on each clip and that means a bit more space in a not-very-large closet.  I put some things I won't ever wear, even around the house, into the "swap" bag.

I cranked up the mp3 player and got to it.  It took me well into the night but the closet looks better, the chair looks happier, and I didn't have to worry about waking anyone up while I was dropping hangers and saying bad words because I dropped more hangers.

(aside: I have a USB turntable.  The turntable has an audio input so I can plug a tape deck into the turntable.  It also came with some simple software so I can record whatever's playing on the turntable or tape deck.  I also have at least 400 cassette tapes (maybe as many as 600 ~ they're hiding everywhere).  So I've been copying cassette tapes to MP3 and playing a few bits and pieces of each so I can label them.  I'll start putting them in my mp3 player in the car so I can listen and decide what to keep and what to throw away.  So far, I've copied in 75 tapes and it looks like I haven't even made a dent in the original mountains of sound.  So when I'm doing things around the apartment I just put on one of the converted cassettes and enjoy.)




6 comments:

  1. Meg -

    I digitized my CD collection a few years ago.... It took forever. Cassette tapes will take longer AND you will not have the indexing information you have on CDs, Be careful to label each track now, as it will be needed to access the tracks once they are digitized.

    M

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  2. me and my wife had a bunch of cassettes from growing up. I've converted most of them. Anything song related I try to download a good version if it's something I know I want to keep (sometimes a youtube video converted to mp3 is good enough quality). Trust me it'll feel good once you get it done, 50mb of hard drive space vs a cassette tape taking up space is a much better trade. I've started doing the same with old VHS tapes, you can get usb video boxes that will record video for less than $30 these days. Once it's saved as a raw avi I usually compress to divx format to save room while retaining quality.

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  3. I have found it impossible to organize my girl stuff. We recently down sized from a house to a condo. In the basement of the condo is a small spare bedroom with a small walk in closet and my wife has said that I can use the basement as my combination man-cave and ladie's room. Her only request was that I hang my girl cloths in garment bags so that if we had any people in the house they would not immediatedly see the large sized dresses and skirts.
    Try as I might I have no order to the items in the garment bags. I also have 6-8 duffel bags of mostly shoes with some foldable cloths, wigs and makeup that needs to be properly sorted but I am not blessed with a vision as to how to organize my stuff.
    Good luck.
    Pat

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    Replies
    1. Pat -

      May I suggest the following organization that I've come up with:

      First, separate your girl clothes into 4 separate piles: Shirts/Blouses/Tanks/Camis, Pants/Skirts/Culottes/Shorts, Sweaters, and Dresses.

      Next, organize each category by the colors of the light spectrum, but placing black, white, and tan neutrals at the end of each group.

      Now, put each group back in the closet (or storage bags, in your case), and they should be in a usable order, easy to find things....

      This also has the benefit of showing you where you may buy too much in one style or color - so that you can edit your wardrobe effectively....

      Shoes and other stuff.... You're on your own there. I haven't figured out a good way to tackle those items yet.

      M

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  4. Does it have a slot for 8 track tapes?

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  5. I've never owned 8 tracks. BUT I have a 3-1/3" reel-to-reel and some tapes that I'd love to salvage. It runs at 3-1/4 or 1-7/8 ips, controlled by a capstan. I got it in 1966 and it cost an astounding $50!

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