Friday, April 03, 2020

A Time for a Good Old-Fashioned Clearout Weekly Link Round-Up



I hope all of you aren't going stir crazy from social distancing and self-isolation. It is vitally important and must be done, but I know many of you are social creatures who want to be out and about amongst friends and family. Hang in there! If we do this right the first time, we shouldn't have to do it again.

Fortunately for me, I've always been a sort of hermit, so this is all pretty much status quo for me. I can tell things are bothering me though because of what I've been doing. Since I love to organize the spaces in my house, you'd think I'd be able to keep them neat and tidy once they're "put to rights," but nooooo, sooner or later they get junked up either through laziness or because the way the space is organized no longer fits our needs.

I had a few spaces that needed some TLC, and to keep my mind off what was worrying me, I set to with a will and had a good old-fashioned clearout.

A big cedar chest held some items that hadn't been used for years, and since I had no intention of ever using them again, I donated the unwanted and stowed away other needed items inside.

The footwell under my desk was packrat heaven. It finally reached the point where I was stubbing my toes, so everything got pulled out, sorted, and redistributed. It's still a storage space, but it passes inspection now. So does one arm of my L-shaped desk now that two foot-tall stacks of papers have been sorted and either shredded or filed. Even my side of our closet came under my ruthless attack!

The two biggest accomplishments will be saved for future blog posts. Well, that's not quite true. You've already seen one if you saw yesterday's post about my craft room. The second accomplishment? It usually takes me two to three years to finish knitting an afghan. I just finished one in under a month. (I checked. There are no scorch marks on my knitting needles.) Moreover, I've already gone to my craft room and selected the yarn for my next afghan. If I keep this up, I might start doing "Curl Up With an Afghan & a Good Book" giveaways!

It's almost time for me to curl up with a good book, so I'd better head out to the link corral first. Head 'em up! Moooove 'em out!


►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄
  • Where predators are scarce, mongooses may transmit more disease.
  • How Africa's mountain gorillas staged a comeback. (This makes me think of Dian Fossey.)
  • A loggerhead turtle's journey has been tracked 22,991 miles from Cape Town in South Africa to Australia.  
  • A dazzling display of seals wins the Underwater Photographer of the Year award.
  • Nearly fifty rhinos were killed in Botswana in ten months as poaching surges.
  • By watching videos, birds can learn to avoid gross foods.
  • A teacher stumbles upon baby bears "dancing" in a forest in Finland and thinks he's imagining it.
  • Baby tortoises show up in the Galapagos Islands for the first time in one hundred years.

►The Happy Wanderer◄

►Fascinating Folk◄
  • Carolyn Wells: how a prolific mystery author with a penchant for collecting rare books helped to create the "biblio-mystery" genre.
  • A glimpse inside the best summer of Emily Dickinson's life.

►I ♥ Lists◄

That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

Stay safe. Stay healthy. Practice social distancing by curling up with a good book!


6 comments:

  1. I'm more of a hermit, myself, Cathy, so I know what you mean about status quo. And it is a good time to clear everything out, isn't it? For me, there's always such a sense of satisfaction when things are neat/cleared/ etc.. As you say, they don't stay that way, but still. Now, I've got some exploring to do, and there's so much, too! Where to start? The Erebus shipwreck? The Mayan writing? That chapel? An embarrassment of riches!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Another hermit. Yet, when I chose to stay at home most of the time it was normal and now NEEDing to stay home has felt entirely different. I go through some manic cleaning, then can't muster the energy to care for a day or two. :) Off to check some of the links. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes indeed-- wanting to stay home and needing to stay home are two completely different critters!

      Delete
  3. I'll add myself to the ones above that stay at home more. I finally figured out what was wrong with me in this regard. I do stay home and I also have things I do on a regular basis - volunteering at two libraries each week, my yoga classes two days a week, my Weight Watcher meeting, church and other things. Then I come home. I talk to people at each of these places, but except for a few friends at church, I rarely talk to those people at other times. Now that I am home all the time, no talking to anyone much except my husband and a few calls to check on family and friends. Ah well. I'm being good and staying in and only going out for essentials. And one day my reading will be normal again, right? This feels like it's been going on for years....LOL!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, it does, and there's only so much watching an Animal Planet series about the San Diego Zoo will help.

      Delete

Thank you for taking the time to make a comment. I really appreciate it!