Tossing the Office

 Lately I've been trying to do one thing every single day that's been on my List of Things Undone. It's a long list, which gives me a lot of options. Yesterday, for example, I stripped and re-bedded the stalls in the barn. Our horses live out nearly all the time: they spend the night of the Fourth of July indoors (fireworks) and stay in any time it's below fifteen degrees for an extended period of time, or below forty degrees and raining. Obviously I'd cleaned the stalls after July 4th, but since then I'd just scooped up any poop they happened to leave during the hour or so they're in to eat and so I can ride. Over time this mean we were down to very little sawdust and lots of just plain dust, along with some scorned bits of hay. So now we're ready for winter again. Yay, me.

Monday I got my car's oil changed, first time since before the pandemic.

Today I tossed my office.

My fellow knitters will probably be familiar with the term "tossing the stash." This is the periodic pulling out, looking over, and sorting all the yarn you've bought and stashed. I'm all for a good stash toss--usually enjoyable--but today called for much more than that. 

My office is an original part of the house we designed ourselves, and to say that I love it would be an understatement. It's shaped like an L, with a decent bit of floor space in the short end of the L, nearly entirely taken up by my floor loom. The loom blocks access to the built-in bookshelves, so eventually I plan to move it upstairs, but I've got a monstrously long warp on it right now and I'm not moving it until I finish weaving that. I haven't been weaving because books surrounded the loom and filled the bench I sit on when I weave, and--yeah. 

The long end of the L has counters lining both sides, with a space for my sewing machine, and culminates in a built in desk across the corner. I have windows on both sides that let it lots of light but that I can't see out of when I'm working, so I don't get quite so distracted. I have cabinets on both sides, too.

The countertop space gives me lots of room for books sorted into piles, and also papers, and also manuscripts in progress, or research notes, or miscellaneous things I put there that never leave on their own. The sewing machine and the counter beside it were heaped with works in progress and also mending and also a few bags I'd forgotten about, and then there were work bags full of yarn and--yeah.

I can work just fine in chaos for a surprisingly long time, but even I have limits and I'd reached them. 

So, today. Books first, starting with the ones around the loom. Now there are still piles. But they are properly sorted piles--research books I've read, research books I haven't, books I've read and plan to keep forever, books I've read and need to rehome. Books I'd borrowed from ALI and need to return. Books I've already purchased as holiday gifts. Books I wrote--ok, those go in a spot in the cabinet. Books I need to read soon, sorted into piles: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and things that require me to sit down and take notes. 

The countertop with papers wasn't too hard. I knew what everything was and more or less where it should go. But then, oh, reader, I delved into the pile of yarn and projects and stuff. And then I got a wild hare and pulled out all the miscellaneous project bags from beneath the sewing machine and I dumped their contents out too. The dogs ran and hid. I started sorting.

It was amazing what all I found. A multitude of socks, one each of some very complicated patterns. I was in a Sock Club, lo these eight years ago. Every month we'd get a lovely yarn and a beautiful pattern, and I'd have just about enough time to knit one sock before the next month rolled around. 

No, that's not true. I actually was in the sock club for several years, and I knit many, many pairs of socks. The single socks were the ones where I didn't enjoy the first sock enough to knit the second. Once I'd faced that I understood that I needed to do something else with both the socks and the basket. 

I also found a pair of socks that were entirely knit except Kitchner stitching one toe. Kitchner stitching the toe takes about five minutes, but every single time I have to look up the directions, because every time I think I remember I do it backwards and have to rip it out. 

I found an entire sweater, finished, that I made for myself, probably at least 15 years ago as I distinctly remember working on it during one of my son's little league games. (His coach once grinned at me from the field and yelled, "Hey! There's no knitting in baseball!") Now that I'm a much better knitter I understand why I never wore it. 

I found three pairs of scissors, including my good ones. I found some projects I had to stare at for a good long time to remember what the item was. I frogged back quite a few small things on the grounds that it would take me longer to remember what I was doing than to just get that far with something new.

I filled a paper bag with perfectly nice yarn to give away. I filled another with trash, including many nice pieces of yarn that I forced myself to discard. Apparently any string greater than six inches long can count as a nice piece of yarn, one I might save for future use. I was uncharacteristically ruthless today.

I found a hot glue gun. No explanation there.

I found several quarters, which didn't make sense, and several dollar bills, which did. (Dollar bills are exactly 6" long, which makes them handy makeshift rulers, especially for socks.) (I supposed twenty-dollar bills are also 6" long, but I didn't tuck any of those into my project bags.)

I sorted and re-stashed and I'm pretty stunned by the result. Honestly, I could see myself doing this again, in another five or six years.