Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Closet cleanout finds

When I bought my apartment, which has excellent closets for an NYC apartment, my dad told me that the first rule of storage dynamics is that the amount of stuff you have automatically expands to fit the available closet space. I've now been there for just shy of 15 years and yep, Dad was right. I started out the summer mostly focused on Project Seize the Summer, which was important and which has been going pretty well, but here in August certain circumstances made me decide that I also needed to devote some time to Project Seize the Storage.

Mostly I'm not enthusiastic about cleaning (it hasn't helped that the weather's been hot and muggy and I haven't got a.c.), and the closet project is especially aggravating as the apartment went from looking like a smallish tornado hit it to looking like a Cat 5 hurricane went through, because I've been pulling stuff out and if I don't just immediately throw it away (like I did with the rolodex - I can't believe I had a rolodex...) it doesn't just back where it came from, figuring out where what's left actually goes is the last step.  So, not necessarily enjoying this, but I am starting to see some results, and I've been finding some fun stuff in the process. 

Little bittersweet - three pictures of ice coming down the East River on a very cold winter. This was taken from my cubicle in World Trade Center 2. I absolutely loved the view and watching the ice come and go was just fascinating. I think I have at least one more from the series in my filing cabinet, I'll put these with that one. Good find.

Then there was this. Paddler Magazine did a spread about paddlers' responses to 9/11. I was a partner at Manhattan Kayak at the time and I am still very proud to have been able to help out with this.

ok, enough wistful nostalgia, here's a funny nostalgia. Look what I still had! 

HA! Do kids these days even know what these are??? OK, this didn't make the cut (it didn't actually have any phone numbers in it) but what a funny thing to find. And yes, I threw away the stash of floppy disks I found too - no idea what was on them, I broke open the cases and cut up the disks in case it was anything sensitive, pretty sure whatever was on 'em wouldn't have been worth the bother of taking them to a place that could actually transfer the info. Floppy disks and an empty Rolodex. The things you just stash when you think you have more closet space than you'll ever need, right?  

WOOHOO! Then there's the things you stashed and forgot you had. Delighted to find this photo of me and my folks and my sister whitewater rafting on the Ocoee in North Carolina. Think this goes back to 1999 or so. That's me with the giant smile in the back. This was such a fun vacation, and a terrific intro to whitewater. The next day we went down an easy section of the Nantahala in duckies - that was also a blast. There was a picture from that, too, I hadn't seen either one in ages and thought I'd lost both of them but here this one was after all!

So ok, I guess cleaning out the closets once every 15 years whether they need it or not (and ok, they kind of did) is worth doing.


4 comments:

Alana said...

I hear you, because I’ve lived in my house for over 30 years. We await further posts and finds- now you have to keep going!

bonnie said...

There's at least one more lined up!

The closet that I hit on Sunday was probably the best for the time-capsule stuff - I'd just stuck some file boxes in there when I first moved in and that was the last time I touched 'em. It's kind of interesting how if you put a thing in a box and don't look at it for 15 years, when you do look at it again it's going to be either "Why did I keep this?" or "OMG I'm so glad I kept this!"

clairesgarden said...

i've been sorting some boxes from storage.. surprises in there !! some keepers, some out and some sold.
your series of ice pictures. i thought as i scrolled down it was an interesting changes in shadows as the sun travels. .. then you said the ice.. lol .. i hadn't noticed it.
9/11 was terrible. even to people all the way over here. i was at work when it was announced on the radio.

bonnie said...

Ha! Sharp eyes on the shadow changes and now that you mention them, I think I put the pictures backwards - I've got the sun travelling west to east instead of east to west! East River (like all the waterways around Manhattan) is fully tidal so it's got to be the ice going back up the river on the flood. Tristan Gooley would be proud of me. Well, no, he would be proud of YOU for noticing that! :)

The one box I didn't have the heart to go through was a box full of 9/11 newspapers and articles. That was back when I was still buying actual papers to read on the subway (now I have online subscriptions to the 2 I read regularly) and I must have just put everything about the attack in that box. That one just went straight into its new storage spot without any review - not a branch of Memory Lane I need any help going down, especially with September right around the corner.

On a happier note, I have a similar box half full of stuff about Obama getting elected. I was that excited! Now that stuff I might look through sometime, that would be pleasant.