Monday, January 30, 2012

Fortuitous Disaster, the creamy underbelly

Little-horned Bighorn Sheep
(not) swimming in tailings pond
Nye, Montana, at the mine

It is now almost the last of the first of the current. I tell tales of fortuitous disaster: it begins during the last of the previous.

During December, prior to Montana-ing, I got my bedroom/office/art studio spiffed & spick & spanned. The art supplies were organized on the closet shelf & on the book shelves in the little secret room created by placing my pencil post bed at a diagonal & draping a sheet (& some decorative elements) over the posts at the head of the bed. Oh, how lovely & ready for art action!

Then, at the end of week the first, year current, I returned home & began to leisurely use said supplies. During one of my recreation breaks, I was watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine downstairs, catching up with the episodes watched during my absence.

I heard a crash.

You probably know what I'm going to say. Ah, yes. I went upstairs to find I had exceeded the load-bearing capacity of my closet shelf & all my art supplies & all my clothes were galumphed together on the floor of the closet.

I went back downstairs to finish my episode. (Alas, now all the episodes are watched...)

After some research at Lowe's & Home Depot, we chose ClosetMaid, the new superhero, to take on the duty of holding all. I tried to use their online design tool, but it doesn't work with Chrome, only Explorer, so I did it the old fashioned way, with lengths of pink string & bits of masking tape to represent shelves. I measured some clothes to determine hang-length. I decided how many clothes I was going to permit.

I call it a digital closet, an upgrade from analog, for I decided to hang clothes in the little slots at the edge of the shelves, rather than let them slide together on a closet rod. The clothes are particles, not waves. In, or out. No maybes. No scrunching. I still have some evaluation to do & some clothes to eliminate, but it's a lot of fun--& the shelves for supplies! Calloo, callay. I am indeed chortling in my joy.

My firm nothing-on-the-drafting-table-but-active-art-&-a-beverage (okay, the cell phone gets to occasionally park there, but nothing else!) has worked so well I am extending it to my desk system. One shelf in the closet will be my staging area for papers. Another new rule is this: chairs are not tables. A chair should be a useful place to sit things on, not set things on. We'll see how well that one goes...

I'm still sorting & organizing, but I have come far in this first of the current. As I progress, I shall share details--& even a picture of the closet. It has already spawned an art project idea. Fortuitous disaster indeed.

Such a long saga. More to talk about, but another time.

Blog alternative:
222. (what a lovely number) Count the pants in your closet. I am pretty sure you have more shirts than pants, so that would be a lot more work. In the counting, it is possible you will find you have an embarrassment of riches that cover your ass--err, mmm, assets. You may find that you have pants you do not wear, or cannot wear, or do not want to wear. Consider de-pantsing yourself.