Going paperless, manual edition

About 4 years ago I went online to find the manual to our ice cream maker as it had a recipe we wanted to try, and at the time we could not find it (that was before we used the filing cabinet and even were really organized). It took about 3 hours of searching, traversing various sites, before I found what I was looking for. The manufacturer’s site was of no help. Their site looked like it was made from geocities. With that in mind, I was hesitant to begin the phase of going paperless where you download or scan your manuals to get rid of the paper copies.

I’m happy to say things have improved dramatically in the last 4 years. The ice cream maker’s site? I found the manual in about 45 seconds. For most manufacturers even, you can now track down a manual for something you own to download and throw out the paper copy. It’s fantastic!

But there are still limits. Store brands are woefully under-represented. It is still possible to find such manuals online, but you have to go to sites that advertise themselves as manual repositories, and usually just contain links back to the manufacturer or store front who doesn’t have that manual available for download. Some of the sites do have manuals, but the download link is obscured around several dozen google ads they try to make you click by accident. I’m pretty sure that’s their business model.  They can be found, but it does take some hunting. Craftsmen and Husky proved particularly challenging.

Another limiter is that a lot of the manufacturers only provide manuals for products they are actively selling. A shop vac I bought from Ryobi is no longer offered and the manual cannot be found anywhere.

There are also time limits, even for larger companies that you wouldn’t think would be a problem. A Frigidaire refrigerator we bought in 2005 had an easy to find manual, but the chest freezer from 2001 could not be located. If you want to go paperless, start downloading manuals now! Just because you can find them now does not mean they’ll still be around when you need them.

It has been a good two weeks of getting rid of paper. I hope to snap a photo of everything that we’re putting out for recycling this Thursday.

The War on clutter, Part 2

A fantastic weekend! So much gone. Though so much remains. It’s astonishing how much of a mess is created by cleaning out all of the junk in your life. But to get rid of it, it must first be exposed.

We got rid of our filing cabinet.

The paperless effort has made progress over the course of the last year, but it can be hard to find the time and motivation to pull a file folder out of the drawer and proceed to scan and shred. So, last weekend, I realized that to get rid of the paper, we must first get rid of the container that holds it. Just like getting rid of the coffee table eliminated the junk that accumulated upon it.

Where there was a filing cabinet now sits several small stacks of file folders. But again, as with the coffee table, the room is now much bigger. Even with the floor littered with file folders, the room has grown in size. It’s not about increasing how much space you have, but rediscovering how much space is already there.

We also got rid of our old home stereo system, and will hopefully today be rid of a charcoal grill that came with the house and the second litter box we no longer use. Last week about 7 CD’s sold, and we went through our books to see what to donate, so the shelves are now more spacious.

The goal has become to move out of our house with less than we moved in with. This will be a challenge given that we’ve since had a kid, but I think it is possible. At the very least, we might be able to break even, which is still saying a lot.

So, yes, a fantastic weekend!

The War on Paper is now the War on Clutter

The war on paper is not over. The soldiers got temporarily re-deployed onto other projects to reduce home clutter in other ways, but they’re starting to trickle back and hitting the paper hard. The 2009 finances are done, as well as half of the car records. I’ve also started downloading pdf versions of some manuals.

We finally got rid of our 20 year old TV, and replaced it with something a little nicer. More importantly, we got rid of the old entertainment center. The thing was massive, and a magnet for odds and ends to accumulate upon. The newer one is much smaller. Less footprint = less mess. I swear, our living room doubled in sized once we got rid of that thing.

When we got the house, it ended up being a foreclosure auction, and some things of the previous owner were left behind, including a pretty sizeable collection of Blues and Jazz CD’s. We held onto them for a couple of years in case the previous owner ever came back looking for them, but have started to sell them off on Amazon. Listing on amazon is pretty easy, but it still takes a while to list over 300 CD’s, especially when you need to sample each one to make sure it works, given that they’ve been sitting in the attic for quite a while. Over half of them are gone now, which feels pretty good.

While getting rid of junk is important, Julie and I are trying  pretty hard to minimize how much we actually throw away. There are lots of recycling programs. The TV was donated

The war is not over, but neither is it lost!

On the Topic of Dreams

Julie asked me the other night if I thought the American Dream was  dead, and it got me thinking.

Do dreams really die? If so, where do they go? Is there a dream heaven or hell? Is there a dream purgatory? Is it possible to kill a dream? If so, should it be made illegal? After all, killing is wrong, so should you be able to charge someone with dreamicide? But what if the person dreams about killing other people or their dreams? Do you then kill the dream? Does that then kill the dreamer?

Dreams have been known to take on a life of their own, but does that make them killers? After all, where did they get that life? Was it stolen? Was it gifted? Was it leased!?!

July 8th, 2010

An amazing end to the work week! We started and finished a work project. It was not painting. We put a windshield to guard a front door from the high winds that often roll through and can easily rip a storm door right off its hinges.

There has not been a single project that went straight forward. The painting project on day 1 ran into mold. The skirting project on day 2 had no electricity on the site. The painting project on day 3 ran into a paint shortage (and some administrative difficulties I’m told). And, the windshield project for day 4 did not have enough posts that were long enough to anchor it to the ground. We started with 3 4”x4”x12’ posts that we cut to 10 feet. Only problem, we needed a 4th and the longest they had was 8 feet. This is what the Re-Member people mean when they say something is Rez-ified. It’s not about planning, it’s about working with what you’ve got, which is never sufficient.

The difference? This time we made it work! We reconfigured the design on the fly to work with a shorter pole we were able to anchor directly to the house. No more giving up and leaving it to be finished by another team. April and Nicole learned to drive screws into the wood as well as use a circular saw. By the time we were done they were making better cuts than me.

Theo got to play with an impact wrench as well. He mastered the lag bolt insertion. It’s always exciting when they argue over who gets to lean the new tool.

Anyhow, the redesign worked, we had time to paint it, and left them with a fully functional windshield.

Clean up upon return. We were charged with gathering the recycling and tying up cardboard which took no time at all. Used the extra time to untangle and rewind an otherwise useless mass of twine.

This is where I’m going to end the journal transcription. There’s not a lot to say about the return trip. Everyone made it back, safe and sound.  A full blown presentation of the trip is in the works and tentatively scheduled for October 3rd, 2010. You can check the church’s calendar at www.uccburlington.org for the time and address of that. Pictures are still being gathered and added, but I plan to send a link to those out once they’re all posted after the presentation. Thanks to those who had read this.

July 7th, 2010

Our group has been split to do different things today. Group one, which consists of myself, Kate, Nicole, April and Theo are on tour today. Group two with is Sara, Brian, Samantha, Jaime and Geoffrey have a work today. Tomorrow they’ll tour while we work.

I would’ve preferred the groups stay together. Tried to get it reworked, but it was not an option.

Summary of the tour day:

All in all, I wish we could have worked. The tour was nice, but I think we could’ve been more effective building or painting. But there were highlights:

• Visited Red Cloud school (as well as Red Cloud’s grave). Saw his gun in the museum. Red Cloud, for those that don’t know, was really the Lakota Chief who realized that they would have to give up their way of life if they wanted to live at all, and negotiated a lot of the original treaties between the tribes and the US government.
• Saw a very cool dreamcatcher. Very Escher-like:
• Learned about the transit system. They’ve only recently gotten it working, and are very proud of it.
• Had Lunch at Bettie’s kitchen. The buffalo burger was fine, the chocolate cake was great!
• Hiked up past the kitchen for a great view, though I spent a lot of time keeping kids from trespassing onto the neighbors property through a break in the fence.
• A Lakota college I found something for Alex (at last!)
• Saw a picture of the Buffalo Sherman slaughtered to reduce the Native American population. Each of those white dots is a head of a buffalo that was killed, and it’s meat left to rot. Average buffalo yields 350 lbs of meat.

• Visited the Singing Horse trading post, where they had puppies!
• Craft fair tonight. Bought a necklace and earrings for  Julie, was definitely worth the wait.
• Kids got to practice beating a traditional drum, and we danced.
• Tomorrow we paint. From the descriptions of team 2, it will not be a lot of fun, but I remain optimistic.

Last work day. Barely feels like we’ve done anything.

Advertising for kids

I girl got my attention as I walked to the train the other day. She asked me what I thought about McDonald’s advertising to kids. I didn’t have time to take her up on the subject, as I needed to catch my train. Plus, I’d never really thought about it.

I’ve thought about it now.

We do not see much TV, so I don’t know if McDonald’s advertising has recently ramped up to warrant this street campaign, but otherwise they’ve been advertising to kids for years. One of the original Ronald McDonald was in a homemade costume by Willard Scott, who later went on to found The Today Show. That was a pretty creepy costume made out of popcorn bags and soda cups. I’d say that the advertising I saw from McDonald's as a kid gave me fewer nightmares that that costume did when I saw it as an adult.

I would also prefer that advertising to the stuff put out by cereal and cookie companies that are aimed at kids. That stuff is what I imagine when I picture an acid trip. Cookies melting to form chocolate rivers as cereal erupts from fissures in the ground. It’s either a tasty treat or the end of the world. Those commercials would do Salvidor Dali proud.

Now, let’s say that we all say enough is enough. These commercials encourage far too much of a consumer mentality in little kids, who lack the income to sustain such appetites, and it strains parent child relationships because the kids develop needs for things they don’t. We ban advertising geared toward children. This leaves a lot of open advertising space that needs to be filled. And it gets filled with adult advertising.

One thing I will say about advertising to kids, it is largely void of excessive sexuality. The same cannot be said of adult advertising. A lot of such commercials seem to try to make up for the lack of it in kids advertising. If I had to choose between my son watching a commercial with a clown dancing with a cookie, and people enjoying the way viagra makes themselves feel, I’ll opt for the former. Especially once he gets old enough to ask me to explain what the commercials mean.

So, I guess I don’t have a problem with McDonald’s advertising to kids.