My solution: rent a
dumpster! I thought it was a little much, but it locked me down to dedicating time on
actually throwing stuff away. I also thought a 10-yard would be over kill, but as long as I
got it about half-full I would be happy. Whelp, I probably got it just about 1/4 full just
from the garage last night before gaming. (Although, that included a couple large boxes of
roof debris and a roll of ruined carpet from the hurricanes.)
Saturday morning I
started by sweeping out the garage (I'm going to be in and out a lot, so lets minimize
tracked in debris) and tossing the old JACO VHS storage cubes that have been sitting in my
library. (The cubes are finally dead!) Good thing I excavated the handtruck from under the
box of debris, that thing is going to be a lifesaver this weekend. Now I'm taking a break
to cool down. Think I'll time these posts and make it an ongoing journal of the Great
Tossout...
10:00 - And I just got the bright idea to take some pictures, so I will have a photo documentary of the dumpster through the course of the day.
11:33 - Breaking News! There is good reason to go through every box! I just found my missing DragonCon badges! I now have all of them on display again! (Which means I now need either a wider closet or a different display space...)
14:00 - Just finished tossing the last of the JACO library into the dumpster. Yes, I got
photos for posterity. And on that note, time for lunch.
19:00 - OK, that is enough for today. I think the dumpster is 75-80% full... Maybe I should
have gotten the 20-yard one. Garage is cleaned out (as much as it is going to be), Library
is pretty much purged but not reassembled yet and ,while some work has been done on the
main goal, tomorrow is the big excavation in the Billiard Room. (You know, I never realized
just how much like a Clue board I am making my house... Maybe I should referring to the
conference room as the Conservatory...) In any case, I need food now.
Sunday I got a bit of a late start but dug in around Noon. First hour was moving a bunch of keepers from the pool table to the shelves in the spare room, then a bunch of collapsing boxes and going through the pile. So far I have found a bunch of action figures, Wizkids LEs, and over a dozen anime cels from various series. (Mostly You're Under Arrest and Fancy Lala, a couple from Yawara, and a nice one of A-ko that I vaguely remember. But when did I get the Nuku-nuku one and I don't even recognize the kid in the ugly shirt; that one must have been a bonus tossed in with something I actually ordered...) I really should get a cell storage book sometime soon...
14:20 - It is now possible to walk around the pool table. But on the down side, the
dumpster is almost full and I have run out of places to put large boxes.
16:00 - I think I might be beat. Space around the pool table is relatively cleared, but now the top is almost as bad as it was when I stearted this morning. Worse in some ways, since a lot of the stuff on there now I actually have to find a place for! Time for food.
19:08 - Last box just went into the dumpster (well, actually I poured the final detritus
out of it into a hole in the debris and then collapsed the box and put it on top of the
whole pile since the box itself wouldn't fit). I felt a lot better after eating and
watching some TV without otherwise moving and made the last push to finish it off. Of
course now the Conference Table is a little covered and the carpet needs to be swept, or
maybe raked, and then vacuumed. Invited a couple friends over to have a grand re-opening,
but not sure if that is going to happen. It is getting dark and the lighting in that room
is non-existent. Installing a light over the pool table is a future project.
Luckily it rained Sunday night. The water broke the boxes down to the point where everything settled below the level of the top edge fohte dumpster. No danger of overcharge now!
Postscript: When I got back from the LA/LV trip I had a letter from the Homeowners Association about the unauthorized dumpster and asking me to remove it. I refrained from pointing out that the letter was postmarked 4 full days after the dumpster was gone. Morons.