And the clutter clearing continues......

Veteran's Day 2009

Just a quick update....

Work has begun on the masses of old paperwork that has been moved, and moved, and moved again with us as we have relocated many times in our lives. Too many times to count.

Tax records, school records, military records, etc....

I've never owned a reliable shredder and had just begun scoping them out on eBay recently.
I've also been "calling" a burning barrel into my life for some time now.

We decided that a second elliptical was more important than a 220v shredder recently so I once again placed the vision of a burning barrel out there.

Well, that day with its burning barrel arrived.

We were moving things around to relocate our workout room to be in a more stable area of a falling in 1820's Virginia Farmhouse and part of that relocation required the removal of an old kitchen sink with metal cabinet and the removal of an old fire breathing coal furnace.

The sink was cake walk compared to the cast iron, whole house furnace.
The only way the furnace was going to come out of the place was in pieces.
So I started on it with a hammer and then upgraded to a 13# sledge.

After taking off the outer shell of the unit it dawns on us that the main burning section of the furnace IS a burning barrel!!

WHOOO HOOOO!!! I'm like a kid at Christmas!!!

It has been here for the past 7 years!!!
All I had to do was give in and begin removing the clutter to find it!!

Needless to say, we have modified it, placed it in the yard and "fired it up" for our needs.
Many years of burning coal was evident when I stoked it full of scrap wood that has accumulated and the unit began to belch black, foul smelling smoke.

Now it burns paper with the ease and efficiency of an incinerator.

On to the next clutter project....our old records.

~ Pete

A compilaton of quotes to help inspire and/or motivate you.

Quotes Concerning Clutter:

“To change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally, one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one's mind and the psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use.”
~Anais Nin

“Think about any attachments that are depleting your emotional reserves. Consider letting them go.”
~Oprah Winfrey

(These three following Bruce Lee quotes referred originally to martial arts and a philosophy of life, but they apply very well to clutter and cluttered thinking.)

“There will be calmness, tranquility, when one is free from external objects and is not perturbed.”
~Bruce Lee

“Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.”
~Bruce Lee

“It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”
~Bruce Lee

"For the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication."
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Gift From the Sea

"Your house is your home only when you feel you have jurisdiction over the space."
~Joan Kron

“Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
~Albert Einstein

“More important than learning how to recall things is finding ways to forget things that are cluttering the mind.”
~Eric Butterworth

“Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!”
~Og Mandino

“You will achieve grand dream, a day at a time, so set goals for each day / not long and difficult projects, but chores that will take you, step by step, toward your rainbow. Write them down, if you must, but limit your list so that you won't have to drag today's undone matters into tomorrow. Remember that you cannot build your pyramid in twenty-four hours. Be patient. Never allow your day to become so cluttered that you neglect your most important goal / to do the best you can, enjoy this day, and rest satisfied with what you have accomplished.”
~Og Mandino

“Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals.”
~Donald Rumsfeld

"I've been getting rid of some clutter — anything that doesn't serve a positive purpose in my life — and making room for things that feel happy to me. Because I get to make my life whatever I want it to be. I get to make the room feel however I want it to feel. I get to make the closet as full or as spacious as I want it. And, if I have more clutter to get rid of after Christmas, I'm not going to wait a year, or two or three to do it."
~Jan Denise

“The physics of clutter is that it will come into your office without your assistance, but will not go away without your assistance.”
~Julie Mahan

“If you have debt I'm willing to bet that general clutter is a problem for you too.”
~Suze Orman

“People's homes are a reflection of their lives. It is no accident that people have a huge weight problem in this country, and clutter is the same thing. Homes are an orgy of consumption.”
~Peter Walsh

"The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you...If you don'tlife controls you."
~Anthony Robbins

Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.
~ Napoleon I

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.
~Mark Twain

“Come to the edge.”
“We can't. We're afraid.”
“Come to the edge.”
“We can't. We will fall!”
“Come to the edge.”
And they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.
~Guillaume Apollinaire

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
~Anais Nin

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
~Theodore Roosevelt

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
~Seneca

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
~Ambrose Redmoon

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
~Dale Carnegie

The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
~Lao Tzu

You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"
~George Bernard Shaw

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
~Samuel Beckett

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.
~Elbert Hubbard

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.
~Richard Bach

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
~Edmund Burke

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.
~St. Augustine

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
~Helen Keller

The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.
~John F. Kennedy

You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus.
~Mark Twain