In 2014, my cousin Ian (Tim’s son) moved to San Francisco with his wife Alison. I’m so happy to have more keepers of the cabin living close enough to visit it often! Ian and Alison and some of their friends have been to 20 Acres several times in the last year. During those trips, Ian did something wonderful (and welcomingly neurotic) with all the STUFF that was now finally in sort-of-organized-but-not-really STUFF locations. He meticulously cataloged it. All of it. He made a diagram of every single dresser and drawer and cabinet and storage bin, and he listed every single thing in each place. AWESOME! I now reference Ian’s STUFF LIST at least a couple times before and during each trip.
Thanks to this new STUFF LIST, with a quick glance I can tell you that Drawer 3 of the sink counter currently has 2 rolls of aluminum foil, while Drawer 6 has a whopping 42 AAA batteries. In the opposing counter, Drawer 11 has a bottle of avocado oil with an expiration date of 3/2018. Drawer 13 on the left side of the canyon bed has five 1 ⅛ – 3″ hose clamps; an edge trimmer; 6 flashlights; 2 packs of playing cards, and 8 dice. Under the deck, Bin B has 8.5 pairs of work gloves (yes, that’s eight and a half pairs); Bin D has five 1 ½” 90º F/F elbows (black); Bin E has two cans of expanding foam sealer; PLENTY of paint brushes and rollers, two squeegees, and a 3″ sawtooth scraper; and Bin F has 3 tennis balls, thirteen 2×4″ brackets (right angle), and extra swiffer pads and dust mop refills. And on and on and on.
Again, Bin F under the deck has 3 tennis balls in it. Yep, someone carried three tennis balls a couple miles up the canyon to the cabin for some reason. Whoever it was, I am certain their reasoning was sound! And whoever you are, I don’t mean to single you out! I’ve certainly brought my fair share of random, curious, strange, seemingly useless, well intentioned but later forgotten stuff up.
In the era of STUFF EVERYWHERE, with stuff that was constantly being moved around, it was IMPOSSIBLE to keep track of all of it. On various trips, we often brought up more of the EXACT SAME STUFF because we had no idea that someone else already brought that STUFF up and tucked it away somewhere, or we simply forgot that we had already brought that STUFF up ourselves.
We have three spatulas. There’s a pretty good chance I brought up at least two of ‘em.
I’m so glad that era is (mostly) over now (or at least that we’ve moved on to to the out-of-sight-out-of-mind phase of the STUFF EVERYWHERE era). We still have too much STUFF, and it’s still everywhere, but now it’s both neatly stored out of sight and easy to find thanks to Ian’s STUFF List. Someday, we will slowly start removing all the stuff that we definitely don’t need up there anymore, while leaving enough of the stuff that may come in handy for continuing cabin projects and/or future repairs.
We’ll figure it out. Maybe.
