I’m cleaning up my home computer workstation. This is somewhat like cleaning out a refrigerator: if it hasn’t been done for a long time, it can be pretty repulsive. I’m a junk collector by nature; I save stuff. “This might come in handy one day.” Or, as my father once muttered about some worn out work boots which he’d long since replaced, but was reluctant to discard, “Them things would’a been like gold in the Depression.” It’s hard to throw away good stuff. Hence, it accumulates.
It accumulates; it becomes disordered, it collects dust by the cubic yard; it becomes the habitation of devils and every hateful and unclean bird; and in the case of a computer workstation, it develops a Gordian knot of cables and power cords.
I rented a Bobcat down at Home Cheapo and managed to get everything off the desk and the corner cleaned out and the cables untangled and wiped down. Carried the dirt out back and filled in some low spots. Got the walls vacuumed clean and everything shiny. Now it was time to set things back in place.
As it turns out, I’ve had more on that desk and in that corner than I really had room for. Some might say I had more than the Gross Domestic Product of a small Latin American country. In any case, I needed to discard stuff, which isn’t easy. See paragraph [1] above.
I decided I don’t need my printer, a hulking mammoth called an “all in one” model. I seldom use it, it usually has a bad ink cartridge when I need it, and I wind up using Wonder Wife’s printer via the network. So I got its original packaging from the attic (“See? I told you it might come in handy one day!”) and boxed it up nicely with a note taped to the outside to remind me of its condition. When I carried it back up, I got to looking at a large collection of computer equipment that I’m saving until needed. I counted seven other printers. Down in my “closet office” (which is now only a storage closet, but I still refer to it as Fort Cloffice), I have two more.
*Sigh*