Friday...

[ozarque]

It's a beautiful sunny day here, and that's very good news. I'll get more done, and get it done more easily.

Yesterday George started tackling the task of clearing out the shelves and drawers in his room, and discovered two things very quickly. First, that it's a task much like looking up a word in the dictionary; you keep getting distracted by

Comments

[kathryn_ironic]

I second and highly recommend the use of a camera in de-cluttering:
For papers
1. Setting up a photo station is simple- I make sure I have a place to rest the camera and daylight or at least two lamps to keep the lighting even. That said, my camera works as a handheld photocopy machine in the middle of the stacks at libraries= you can get good handheld results with a little practice.

2. There are some small and *fast* cameras out there-- so doing this is much better than a standard scanner (or photocopy machine) for papers, magazines, clippings, etc. [In my case I have a Canon 870, which is compact (fits in a pocket) and can take photos as quickly as I can turn pages.] It's easy to spot-check the quality.

3. The camera lets me zoom in on details (better than a magnifying glass), take shots from different angles, etc. This works well for hand-written notes: I've found details I didn't initially see when just looking by eye.

4. Today's OCR software is good: the one I use gives me a picture of the text in the rare places where it cannot figure out the text, but this rarely happens (even for low-contrast / text-on-weird-backgrounds text).

For Goods:
1. When I look back at photos of donated items, I've learned that I don't miss them (quite the opposite, I usually get a "wow, that wasn't a flattering color" feeling)-- it makes it easier to contemplate another round of donations.
2. I can take detailed pictures of an item's identifying marks, so I know I have the info to search for a replacement on the net. Of course, this hasn't happened- see 1 above.