Organizing and decluttering the homestead

[Beekissed]

Took the final load in this morning....total junk removed from the land shocked me, as it just didn't look like it weighed that much. Came to just over a ton of junk! Feels like it was removed from my shoulders, I tell you!

Lord willing, we'll never get to that point again in our time here. In the past 9 yrs I've systematically decluttered the folks' land, house and shed and will continue to do so until we have a very streamlined, minimalist as we can get it system, while still having stores of scrap lumber and other items that can be used for creating solutions here.

Currently logging the land to remove overly large trees needing harvested and all the pines, which have shallow roots and are constantly falling down. That will create a HUGE mess, but one we can deal with to create firewood and chip mulch for use here on the land. When that is finally cleaned up, the land will finally have some measure of order and the thinning of the trees will help create more diversity of food in the forest.

 

[baymule]

That is very exciting! LIKE about a million times! LOL I know that had to feel wonderful to get that mess gone. That is the kind of work that makes you feel darn good.

 

[flowerbug]

@Beekissed i'm glad you all got it done and are healthy even if hurting a bit.

this doesn't sound like it was a very ancient dumping site though?

when i was a kid there was a place in the woods (not on our property) that us kids would go mess around at. all sorts of old glass jugs, hunks of metal, old appliances, broken plates, etc. just really a lot of fun for a kid. we dig up anything we could that would break when we shot it with the bb guns. if there was anything toxic we never knew it. could have been? maybe. no idea. eventually someone bought that land and i have no news of what happened to that dump or if they just buried it all and left it.

the strangest thing i found there was a cow or horse tooth and i'm pretty sure some of the bottles we dug up and shot with the bb guns were actually worth something to someone if we'd have only known better. oops.

later on in life i had a friend who was a bottle collector but what he really liked was the exercise itself of the digging. he was a big guy and a good friend. what we did was go dig and then we'd get so many crates of bottles that had to be cleaned. for every crate that i helped clean he'd let me pick out a few of the bottles, but not some of the ones he really was after (which were funnily enough ones that i had little interest in myself). he also scuba dived for old bottles and i would man the boat for him. it was an interesting era of my life...

 

[Beekissed]

this doesn't sound like it was a very ancient dumping site though?

Only around 25 yrs old but has been added to all the years hence, a little at a time. Even found a 1979 half dollar buried in the muck, along with a few good canning jars. Will try to get the remaining useful items organized and under the pallet shelter this next week if the weather permits it.

I'm just so glad to have all the toxic stuff gone~paint cans and such~and all the old things that used to hold rainwater for the mosquitoes to breed in. Walked out there today to see it all again, thanking God it is all gone and no longer the eyesore it has been each fall when the leaves drop.

 

[Beekissed]

That is very exciting! LIKE about a million times! LOL I know that had to feel wonderful to get that mess gone. That is the kind of work that makes you feel darn good.

Oh, Bay, you have NO idea! I have a smidge of type A that I try to rein in, so clutter lingers on my mind and bounces up and down in there a lot, trying to make me feel uncomfortable. Twenty five year old clutter weighs a lot on my mind. Since I moved back here, I've had them remove Dad's old tractor and old truck, both sold to collectors, odds and ends of construction things and cleared out old and rotting lumber piles, tin roofing scraps and systematically cleaned out the shed each year, slowly but surely streamlining all the stuff we store there.

There were 5 weedeaters out in that pile....who needs to store 5 broken weedeaters??? Old windows, with the glass long ago broken from who knows what, a bathtub, tires, three garden hoses(I kept one for rubber tubing...endless possibilities with those), rusted out steel drums that used to be barrel stoves or fire barrels, cracked buckets and totes galore, barbell wts, trophies, a mini fridge, three broken office chairs, various broken lawn chairs, 5 or 6 propane tanks, many old paint cans, etc.. You get the picture....all stored with good intentions of using for parts or for other things~or just put out there until it could be removed to the dump~and then mostly forgotten.

I can't WAIT to get the sheep out on pasture so I can deconstruct the temporary sheep penning~it looks so very tacky~and repurpose the cattle panels and pallets for other things. The CP will go in the garden and as portions of the sorting pens, the pallets will be used to store winter hay up off the ground in the various paddock rotation areas and T posts utilized here and there....those are always handy to store and use for various things.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

Bath tub? I could see that being repurposed as a water trough for the sheep, or perhaps a duck pond.

 

[flowerbug]

it is too bad that scrap steel prices have been so low as anything you had metal would be worth at least a few $ to the scrap yards. getting it to them is the tough part.

we took a few things to the scrap yard a few miles from us and i thought maybe we'd get $5 for it. nope, when he told me how much i just told him to not bother writing the check as the paperwork wasn't worth it.

i was glad however knowing eventually it would be recycled to make new steel.

 

[Hinotori]

The low prices have reduced the amount of tweeker thefts, so it's got good and bad.

 

[flowerbug]

@Beekissed i think i have a similar kind of thing going on there but i don't call it Type A but more task oriented. like if i am working on a project and haven't finished it then it hangs in my head until i can get it done and resolved and can cross it off my mental "Things To Do List".

some items on that list bother me more than others. that is how i prioritize and try to explain to Mom what i see is most important to get done first - anything life threatening or a potential source of injuries - aka almost everything around here can seem to fit into that category at times if i let them all bleed together - which i try not to as always one project may interact with a lot of other elements so i gotta make some kinds of boundaries in my head even if i know they are somewhat artificial impositions and not really how it works in the world sorts of things.

but then when i can finally get something crossed off (and all the sub-projects and asides) it does feel so wonderful at last. i'm still carrying this pallet and ditch and neighboring garden project which are all connected in my head) - can't wait until the weather gets good enough i can get more of it done. i already know Mom is sick of looking at it. sorry Mom. i said that before i even started because of all the other things going on and all the rain we had this late summer and fall it just wasn't going to get done all at once. i'm sure we'll celebrate when i can get it all done and enjoy the moment and then just get on with the next thing - because that's what we do.

 

[Beekissed]

@Beekissed i think i have a similar kind of thing going on there but i don't call it Type A but more task oriented. like if i am working on a project and haven't finished it then it hangs in my head until i can get it done and resolved and can cross it off my mental "Things To Do List".

That's it, exactly! Can't get such things off my mind until I cross it off the list....except my list is both mental and actual, as I make lists each season as to what tasks are most pressing and in need of getting done. I have an A list and B list, some of which get carried over to the next season's list if they didn't get done in this season.

I love, love, love crossing things off that list and also seeing that list with black lines through the projects we've gotten completed when I start making a new list. It would take me some time and mental gymnastics to relate all the projects we have gotten done here since I moved back....those lists are one of the most wonderful tools I utilize here. Keeps me focused on what's important.