Simple Tip But...

I proudly carried seven pounds of magazine clippings downstairs this morning and dumped them in the garbage can. They are ALL scanned! Yep, thirty years of articles (mostly from Sunset Magazine) about landscaping and vegetable gardens and flowers and seeds and travel and arbors and home renovation and beaches and fruit trees.

We were trapped lived in Southern California at the time, upgrading our first home inside and out, and I poured over every issue for ideas. We escaped moved to Nevada with quite a bit of sweat equity and boxes of magazines. Eventually I found time to rip out my favorite articles and stored them away in just one box.

Amazingly, most of those articles were still interesting to me when it came time to digitize them. I guess classic design endures and plants stay pretty much the same, which is good, but it meant a LOT of scanning. How much? Well, I've spent every evening for two weeks at the computer desk.

Don't feel too sorry for me though. Number one, it meant I wasn't downstairs (downstairs=kitchen=food and I have NO willpower). And number two, I've had fun with Playlist, YouTube, my fellow bloggers, and webcams while the scanner was quietly whirring in the background.

Simplifying isn't quick, but it's satisfying. I can see the glorious dark oak desk instead of a pile of ragged paper. Sheer bliss.

There's no rest for the packrat though. I only got halfway through our vinyl LP's this summer and I'm thinking that our guest room would look a lot spiffier without the albums and turntable stored in the corners...