The name was familiar to me and I haven't looked at a Playboy since the 80's. I looked it up and she was married to Travis Barker, drummer for Blink-182, and both starred in a reality series, Meet The Barkers. I'm sure I've never watched an episode of that but I did used to watch Talk Soup on E! fairly regularly so I'm guessing that's where I have knowledge of her.
I have a room with all the D's. Death, Divorce, Dislocation, and Downsizing. Each year that passes, more stuff leaves. Soon, the crappy mosaic framed mirror, a folding door I used as a room divider long ago, and a danish modern chair I completely destroyed when I tried to reupolster will hit the curb. It'd be great if my brother didn't have to agonize over the final resting place for mom's meat grinder and krumkaka iron. He'll get the 5 bins of pictures and baby books from 1929 through the advent of digital photos. Say 1929 to 2000. So Much Stuff:(
Several years ago a friend's stepfather died and we filled an F150 full of stuff. Every weekend. For three months. Most went to the landfill, some to Goodwill, a little out to my friend's farm.
When Dad died he lived in a 4000 sq ft house that was full of stuff. Took two weeks for me and 4 cousins just to sort what I could keep and they wanted.
I downsized massively after that. Still have more Lego than I can easily store, and too many books, CDs, and blu-rays.
I once picked up a promising-looking chair in front of somebody’s house on bulky day and attempted a recovering. Somehow it went south so quickly, within 12 hours (it wasn’t constructed quite as well as I thought, or as recoverably, I’ve forgotten) that I asked my husband if we could return it to the yard we took it from. I’m pretty sure that the truck with the claw hasn’t come by yet, I said.
He ruled that you can’t destroy something, which I effectively had, and return it to the yard all torn up, insides coming out.
It was too large to stuff in our own trash can, and not our bulky week; so we set about smashing it up. We actually cut up someone else’s discarded item as if it were a fun hobby.
downsized six and half years ago due to my late wife's illness. should probably throw out half the stuff in the storage unit. i was planning to try to sell some stuff on nextdoor, but i got kicked off it for insulting meth addicts.
You should adopt a nom de plume, rejoin NextDoor, and innocently ask whether it is okay to drop your dog’s poop bag in someone else’s can along your walk on trash day - and just sit back and watch the place burn itself down.
My late mother's book club read that book on Swedish death cleaning; how when you get to your 50s/60s you start getting rid of things so your kids don't have a mountain. Bless her she took it to heart. For weeks, I would open the door to find a UPS man handing me large boxes containing things like her wedding china from 1957. Of course, now I need to do same, sigh.
I lost a very good friend to pneumonia during the Covid Wars. He had made me one of his two executors so I had to fly from Idaho to Virginia to start disposing of his stuff. I found out he kept a storage unit, located the key, and spent several days with a rented pickup truck taking stuff to the dump that had been precious to him but wasn't saleable to anyone else. I returned home with a vastly different outlook on all the stuff *I* have been collecting over the years, and wondering who is going to be hauling *my* treasures to the dump one day. It really motivated me to Marie Kondo-ize my life.
I had to clear out my parent's house. 45 years of accumulation. OK, we kept some of that. Next it was my in-laws place. Most of that stuff ended up at Goodwill. (I also had to clean up after my brother-in-law's tenants. It's amazing how many people just up and leave. And take nothing with them.) The cycle continues, though. I've spent my life acquiring all my goodies. Why should I get rid of it now? Granted, I'm not being forced out and I don't need a storage unit. I told my daughter when I finally take that final nap to just call the auction service. Everything gone in a day!
My Sunday AA meeting had a storage unit because for several years we couldn't get space in the places we were in to keep our stuff (it's a big meeting) so we had to schlep it to and from the storage unit every week.
We decided to do some serious downsizing after moving in to my wife's grandmother's old house. The depth of detritus was astonishing, so I rented a "small cube" disposal bin. It was about the size of several of the rooms in the house,, 8x8x8 feet or so. My wife thought it was ridiculously huge and a waste of money.
After the third time I called the company to come pick it up and replace it, it was obviously not such a bad idea. The house felt much bigger after that. Lighter, too.
Now we pay for a storage unit somewhere that we haven't looked at in years. We're not wise about such things.
I've recently rented that same space due to 1 D - Downsizing. Selling a home and renting something much smaller, because we don't need a 4 bedroom home anymore.
The rental place has that same weird vibe, like I expect sadness for most of it, most people who are renting it, but I think that's just circumstance. It could be the greatest joy of their life is occurring, and they need the space for junk storage for six months after they get back from a world yacht tour that includes shotguns and margaritas.
Or, 3 of the other D's hit 'em, broadside, and this is the flickering fluorescent result.
I just listened to a podcast, “the Economics of Everyday Things”, they talked about storage units. Originally people who built storage units were speculating on land values in areas that were deemed to become popular for housing sometime in the future, so they purchased land, inexpensively, built storage units, and waited for the land value to rise. Then, low and behold, they figured out that there was actually a market for storing other people stuff. I believe I read there are five major storage unit business’ across our country and then a bunch of one-off storage unit companies. There are lots of them in my little town in FL.
I read that too - decades ago. It was confidently reported locally in connection with the long ago Smart Growth fad, exolaining how we could expect these seemingly anti-urban things to change. I have yet to see one of those expected turnovers, even in the urban environment.
And rural land use patterns can change, but sprawl ones seldom do.
We should be careful ….? Nah!
I read something similar the other day about these hundreds of data centers in the works in my state. They aren’t all ordered up and contracted by Google or OpenAI. Many may never reach more than a small percentage of their projected computing power. Speculators are tilting the walls up. Which makes so much sense, at least down here.
But I suspect they will be a permanent light and noise polluting, job-non-creating feature of the land.
Maybe I am wrong and they will go dark - the computing failing to materialize - but they will never be torn down …
Carwashes in my city appear to be functioning as a placeholder. This is a big carwashing city - a very car-proud demographic.
I have actually been using the free vacuums at The Bubble Bath (which I do at a rate of about four-to-one, versus going through the wash) when a mirror-shiny lowrider circled the place playing “Carwash” on his speaker. Fun. There are often 3 or four such within a couple miles. Two were directly across from one another, of similar recent vintage, both attractive and landscaped businesses compared to most on the stroad, and I noticed the other day one was suddenly reduced to rubble. RIP The Wash Tub, aged five.
Any day now they are going to tell us the s****y Lennar “home” developments are just temporary, to be replaced by some higher land use.
Storage unit = my house. James is doing it the hard way. Not like he has a choice of course. My junk would be sorted and catalogued as junk, except for some comics that might have resail value. But I'll be worm food by then so who cares... well maybe whoever gets those early issues of Knights of the Dinner Table.
Is the problem that everyone has bought these platform beds, and you can’t store things under the bed anymore?
My mother even stored my grandmother’s old kitchen table under my old bed for 25 years, asking me at intervals of two or three years if I wanted this 70s rock maple heirloom. It’s true that lurking under the dust ruffle it occasionally caught a toe. It was so heavy that when a D - oddly, not one of the above four - Disease - started her picturing what life would be After, and she proudly began getting rid of things (albeit not ones that made a dent - a baby food jar of screws! some sterling silver corn skewers! - and often things it made sense to keep) and I was able to convince her the table would never find a family taker, I had to invent the wheel and roll it down to the curb for Bulky Day. (When the yard men actually prove their value: not all that pointless blowing, but carrying free stuff away.)
Miss December 2001 (Shanna Moakler) is a 51-year-old lady now. Time flies...
The name was familiar to me and I haven't looked at a Playboy since the 80's. I looked it up and she was married to Travis Barker, drummer for Blink-182, and both starred in a reality series, Meet The Barkers. I'm sure I've never watched an episode of that but I did used to watch Talk Soup on E! fairly regularly so I'm guessing that's where I have knowledge of her.
Thanks, you spared me from having to look it up.
That name sounds familiar. I probably have that issue! In the attic, with all the others..
I have a room with all the D's. Death, Divorce, Dislocation, and Downsizing. Each year that passes, more stuff leaves. Soon, the crappy mosaic framed mirror, a folding door I used as a room divider long ago, and a danish modern chair I completely destroyed when I tried to reupolster will hit the curb. It'd be great if my brother didn't have to agonize over the final resting place for mom's meat grinder and krumkaka iron. He'll get the 5 bins of pictures and baby books from 1929 through the advent of digital photos. Say 1929 to 2000. So Much Stuff:(
Several years ago a friend's stepfather died and we filled an F150 full of stuff. Every weekend. For three months. Most went to the landfill, some to Goodwill, a little out to my friend's farm.
When Dad died he lived in a 4000 sq ft house that was full of stuff. Took two weeks for me and 4 cousins just to sort what I could keep and they wanted.
I downsized massively after that. Still have more Lego than I can easily store, and too many books, CDs, and blu-rays.
I once picked up a promising-looking chair in front of somebody’s house on bulky day and attempted a recovering. Somehow it went south so quickly, within 12 hours (it wasn’t constructed quite as well as I thought, or as recoverably, I’ve forgotten) that I asked my husband if we could return it to the yard we took it from. I’m pretty sure that the truck with the claw hasn’t come by yet, I said.
He ruled that you can’t destroy something, which I effectively had, and return it to the yard all torn up, insides coming out.
It was too large to stuff in our own trash can, and not our bulky week; so we set about smashing it up. We actually cut up someone else’s discarded item as if it were a fun hobby.
downsized six and half years ago due to my late wife's illness. should probably throw out half the stuff in the storage unit. i was planning to try to sell some stuff on nextdoor, but i got kicked off it for insulting meth addicts.
You should adopt a nom de plume, rejoin NextDoor, and innocently ask whether it is okay to drop your dog’s poop bag in someone else’s can along your walk on trash day - and just sit back and watch the place burn itself down.
That seems like a great way for me to stop receiving spam emails from that hideous (but occasionally useful) app.
Due to a mix up at HQ, we accidentally gave you Walter White's unit ....
My late mother's book club read that book on Swedish death cleaning; how when you get to your 50s/60s you start getting rid of things so your kids don't have a mountain. Bless her she took it to heart. For weeks, I would open the door to find a UPS man handing me large boxes containing things like her wedding china from 1957. Of course, now I need to do same, sigh.
I envy the people who live close enough to Replacements.com to drop off their dishes. The shipping doesn’t pencil out anymore, though I have done it.
I lost a very good friend to pneumonia during the Covid Wars. He had made me one of his two executors so I had to fly from Idaho to Virginia to start disposing of his stuff. I found out he kept a storage unit, located the key, and spent several days with a rented pickup truck taking stuff to the dump that had been precious to him but wasn't saleable to anyone else. I returned home with a vastly different outlook on all the stuff *I* have been collecting over the years, and wondering who is going to be hauling *my* treasures to the dump one day. It really motivated me to Marie Kondo-ize my life.
I had to clear out my parent's house. 45 years of accumulation. OK, we kept some of that. Next it was my in-laws place. Most of that stuff ended up at Goodwill. (I also had to clean up after my brother-in-law's tenants. It's amazing how many people just up and leave. And take nothing with them.) The cycle continues, though. I've spent my life acquiring all my goodies. Why should I get rid of it now? Granted, I'm not being forced out and I don't need a storage unit. I told my daughter when I finally take that final nap to just call the auction service. Everything gone in a day!
My Sunday AA meeting had a storage unit because for several years we couldn't get space in the places we were in to keep our stuff (it's a big meeting) so we had to schlep it to and from the storage unit every week.
We decided to do some serious downsizing after moving in to my wife's grandmother's old house. The depth of detritus was astonishing, so I rented a "small cube" disposal bin. It was about the size of several of the rooms in the house,, 8x8x8 feet or so. My wife thought it was ridiculously huge and a waste of money.
After the third time I called the company to come pick it up and replace it, it was obviously not such a bad idea. The house felt much bigger after that. Lighter, too.
Now we pay for a storage unit somewhere that we haven't looked at in years. We're not wise about such things.
I've recently rented that same space due to 1 D - Downsizing. Selling a home and renting something much smaller, because we don't need a 4 bedroom home anymore.
The rental place has that same weird vibe, like I expect sadness for most of it, most people who are renting it, but I think that's just circumstance. It could be the greatest joy of their life is occurring, and they need the space for junk storage for six months after they get back from a world yacht tour that includes shotguns and margaritas.
Or, 3 of the other D's hit 'em, broadside, and this is the flickering fluorescent result.
I had a flashback to watching Dexter years ago. The guy with Bernie Sanders hair has teeth in the shoebox.
I just listened to a podcast, “the Economics of Everyday Things”, they talked about storage units. Originally people who built storage units were speculating on land values in areas that were deemed to become popular for housing sometime in the future, so they purchased land, inexpensively, built storage units, and waited for the land value to rise. Then, low and behold, they figured out that there was actually a market for storing other people stuff. I believe I read there are five major storage unit business’ across our country and then a bunch of one-off storage unit companies. There are lots of them in my little town in FL.
I read that too - decades ago. It was confidently reported locally in connection with the long ago Smart Growth fad, exolaining how we could expect these seemingly anti-urban things to change. I have yet to see one of those expected turnovers, even in the urban environment.
And rural land use patterns can change, but sprawl ones seldom do.
We should be careful ….? Nah!
I read something similar the other day about these hundreds of data centers in the works in my state. They aren’t all ordered up and contracted by Google or OpenAI. Many may never reach more than a small percentage of their projected computing power. Speculators are tilting the walls up. Which makes so much sense, at least down here.
But I suspect they will be a permanent light and noise polluting, job-non-creating feature of the land.
Maybe I am wrong and they will go dark - the computing failing to materialize - but they will never be torn down …
Carwashes in my city appear to be functioning as a placeholder. This is a big carwashing city - a very car-proud demographic.
I have actually been using the free vacuums at The Bubble Bath (which I do at a rate of about four-to-one, versus going through the wash) when a mirror-shiny lowrider circled the place playing “Carwash” on his speaker. Fun. There are often 3 or four such within a couple miles. Two were directly across from one another, of similar recent vintage, both attractive and landscaped businesses compared to most on the stroad, and I noticed the other day one was suddenly reduced to rubble. RIP The Wash Tub, aged five.
Any day now they are going to tell us the s****y Lennar “home” developments are just temporary, to be replaced by some higher land use.
Yeah.
Man this comment thread got depressing. We're not dead yet. :)
Storage unit = my house. James is doing it the hard way. Not like he has a choice of course. My junk would be sorted and catalogued as junk, except for some comics that might have resail value. But I'll be worm food by then so who cares... well maybe whoever gets those early issues of Knights of the Dinner Table.
The Bernie Sanders hair/Kim Carnes line - I can’t stop singing it in my head now.
Is the problem that everyone has bought these platform beds, and you can’t store things under the bed anymore?
My mother even stored my grandmother’s old kitchen table under my old bed for 25 years, asking me at intervals of two or three years if I wanted this 70s rock maple heirloom. It’s true that lurking under the dust ruffle it occasionally caught a toe. It was so heavy that when a D - oddly, not one of the above four - Disease - started her picturing what life would be After, and she proudly began getting rid of things (albeit not ones that made a dent - a baby food jar of screws! some sterling silver corn skewers! - and often things it made sense to keep) and I was able to convince her the table would never find a family taker, I had to invent the wheel and roll it down to the curb for Bulky Day. (When the yard men actually prove their value: not all that pointless blowing, but carrying free stuff away.)