Sew what

So I bought some fabric recently.  I thought I could use it to do a couple of projects.  Preferably, no sew projects, because I don't remember the last time I touched a sewing machine, much less turned it on and used it properly.  Then I remembered that we had one in the attic and thought I wonder if that thing still works....

So I went to the attic and pulled it out.  It's old, dirty and still threaded.  So I started poking around online to get some information about this machine.  It's a Singer Touch and Sew Zig Zag 758 and after a bit of searching I found a manual for it with a copyright date of 1970!  That's right, this thing possibly older than I am!

It's also VERY dirty.  Apparently being stored for the last (at least) 15-20 years hasn't been good for it.  It did actually turn on though.  And the needle went down.  It did not however go back up.  So I started messing with it and realized that the presser foot was stuck to the plate below.

So I started taking things apart and found this....

It looks like the black plastic like thing melted(?) and gummed up the plate and the foot.  I'm thinking Goo Gone might help the plate and foot, but think the black piece will just have to be replaced.  If I can get this thing to work.

So if you know what the name of that little black piece is please let me know, as I haven't been able to figure it out yet.  Apparently, they are feed dogs.  I was informed of this by a friend who was shocked that they came in rubber.  I did however find a local sewing machine repair shop that I may be contacting.

Day 18 - Meaning of your blog name

I grew up in what some would consider a cluttered environment.  My mother and her mother, both have/had habits of keeping things.  I remember going to my grandmother's house when I was little.  There was a table in her living room that was always covered in paper, mostly mail if I remember correctly.  The upstairs of her house contained the childhood belongings of her four children, which made going to her house to play lots of fun.

My mother has similar paper issues.  Before she moved a few years ago, if you opened the compartments above her desk there was an avalanche of paper.  She also had most of the toys, clothes and school papers projects that my sister and I had left there.  An accumulation of over 30 years and two children's worth of stuff.

My father's stuff had been removed from the house many years prior when they divorced.  He was a garbage man prior to retirement.  You know all that stuff that people leave out that just needs a "tweak" to start working again?  Yeah, he brought that stuff home.  He'd either keep it for when he needed it, fix it and use it or take it apart for the spare parts.

Growing up like this, you can understand why I tend to not throw things away.  My paper problem isn't as bad as my mother's but I tend to hold on to things that I don't need anymore.

In 2005 we moved into our current home.  That is a story I will get to some day, but in short our move in date kept changing.  We had been paying to have the bulk of our stuff stored while the house was being built.  We knew the day was close and the end of the month was near, so instead of paying for another month we moved all the stuff from storage into our attic so it would be out of the way.  It's been almost 7 years and some of those boxes haven't moved.  In 2008 my mother in law had a massive stroke and moved into a nursing home.  We had to quickly empty her apartment.  The contents of which ended up in our attic.  A year later my mother put her house on the market, adding even more stuff to the attic.  Basically, it looked like this before I started working on it again...

So here we are in 2012, with an attic bursting at the seams and a need for additional living space.  So I am attempting to redefine the clutter in my attic and in my brain to make that happen.  Hopefully before we've been here 10 years!  We have made some progress, but there's still so much to do.

Unfortunately, I'm easily distracted....

Distraction #3

So I've been participating in the 31 Day Blog Challenge and haven't written about anything else in a week.  It's been fun and a good distraction, but it's taking away from posts on other subjects.  Like the goodbye cake I made for a coworker.....

Get it, it's a truck because he was moving on.

OR

It was a truck, because it was a new pan and I hadn't used it yet.

It's also been raining a lot here, which means J's business is slow.  Which stresses him out, which stresses me out.  So he decided to fill a day, by working in the attic.  Now, there is stuff in the attic that is his and his mom's that needs to be sorted.  I'm glad he made an effort to start going through things.  He also did some rearranging in the process......

I'll have to get a picture.  There's more floor than there was before!

He also reorganized some stuff, and moved things that I had set up....

I had a system. <deep cleansing breath>  He moved some of my system.  <deep cleansing breath>  It's ok.  <deep cleansing breath>  I can handle it.  <deep cleansing breath>

Really, I swear, I'm happy he made some progress.  Just because he moved some of the stuff he wanted to keep into the area I was trying to clean out to become my quiet sanctuary, doesn't mean it can't be moved again once we've cleaned some more.  Right?  RIGHT?  I think I need another drink.

Not what I needed after a rough work day and more Compasses mocking me at lunch.  Seriously, I saw two within two minutes.  I really liked the color of the second one.  It was kind of a greyish/green.  I was jealous.

Nintendo, Atari and Commodore 64

So the teenager called me a hoarder the other day.  I can't imagine why....

Yes, those are original boxes for a Nintendo and a Commodore 64.  Neither of those items are even in those boxes.  The Nintendo box contains the packaging for the Nintendo.  The Commodore box contains the TRS 80(A computer that is more ancient than the Commodore.  It used cassette tapes.)  These boxes actually came from my mother's house.  So if I'm a hoarder, I got it from her.  I even saw controllers from the Atari today, but not the actual Atari or games.  Which is too bad, because I could really go for some Frogger right now.

I've stated before that this "stuff" is not all mine.  But there were definitely some things that I had held onto that can go.  The boxes from the "good" china?  I can see keeping that.  The boxes from the everyday plates, those can go.  Boxes, boxes and more boxes.  I dealt with a lot of cardboard this weekend.  The recycle guys are going to love me tomorrow.....

That's not even all of it.  Some of it is already out in the garage.  So there was definite progress made this weekend.  Which is more than I can say about my car.

I consolidated the gift boxes and bags that were in good condition and am recycling the rest.  There's no reason we need all that we had.  I also reorganized some and turned this....

Into this....

Look!  A floor!

The Attic Issue

Clutter, clutter everywhere. But the attic is by far the worst. We've only lived in this house six years. Before we could actually live in our house, we 'moved' in. Meaning 3 people's worth of crap was carried into our attic. Unfortunately, it didn't all make it out. The attic is sizeable, and uninsulated. Which makes working up there a bit tricky. I always thought I'd get to it eventually. And then life happened.

In 2008 my mother in law had a massive stroke and had to move to a nursing home. We had very little time to clean out her apartment. Which basically means that we boxed up everything(and I do mean EVERYTHING), brought it to our house and put it in the attic.

Later that year, my mother decided to move. My mother lived in the house that my sister and I grew up in. So basically, 30 plus years of our stuff to paw through and get rid of or store in our attic. See at the time, my sister lived in a small condo and didn't have any storage space. So anything she wanted to keep, had to come to our house.

In 2009, I got pregnant. So our den/guest room had to be transformed into a nursery. So, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, the bulk of the stuff from that room went into our attic.

We've had some other smaller events that have added to mess that exists above our heads, but the problem remains the same. We need to go through all this stuff and make some decisions, reorganize and eventually finish off this space so we can have a den/guest room/office/craft room again.

So I'll leave you with this. It's not a recent picture, but you get the idea....