Change 23 - Organize The Laundry Room

I have decided to (once again) organize the laundry room.

Over the past few years, I’ve tried to maintain some level of organization in our laundry room.  It appears, however, from the current state of our laundry room, that my most recent attempt has been an utter failure.  My wife does a great job of keeping our house clean and clutter-free, but the laundry room, at least the half not dedicated to laundry, is “my” area for storage.  I keep my tools, my paperwork, and even an old filing cabinet (which held my comic books when I was a kid) in my half of the room.  Right now, the room is a disaster, with cardboard boxes, filled with stuff, piled three or four high.

Tomorrow, I’m going to reorganize the laundry room, and spend whatever time (and money) it takes to KEEP it organized.

Change 22 - Take Off The Trash

I have decided to take of the trash, daily, instead of every other week.

This is a strange one, I know.  I live in the rural south, and we do not have trash pickup.  Instead, I have to load our trash in the back of my old truck and haul it off to the dumpster.  I hate doing this.  No, hate doesn’t cut it.  I loathe doing this.  Taking off the trash is a miserable, disgusting exercise.  As frugal as I am, I would gladly pay double, no triple, the going rate for trash pickup.  Seriously, I hate dealing with trash - even trash that is packed securely in garbage bags.

Currently, I just put the trash in the back of my truck and make trips to the dumpster once or twice a month.  Inevitably, a cat will get in the back of the truck, tear through the trash, and make a mess.  So, from now on, I’m just going to go the dumpster every day.  As much as I hate going to the dumpster - I hate cleaning up after the stupid cat even more.

I think I need to go throw up.  Ugh.

(And, yes, we keep our trash in trash cans, but we have yet to find one that is completely animal proof.  I’ve purchased a dozen or so trash cans over the years, but, inevitably, I lose their lids or a dog dumps them over.  Plus, I have to admit, I have such a weak stomach, I can barely deal with putting the used trash can back in the back of my truck.  Gross.)

Change 17 - Backup Home Videos

I have decided to backup home videos from MiniDV to an external hard drive.

I have three kids.  As you can imagine, I’ve spent quite a lot of time videotaping them.  I have hours and hours of footage, sitting on MiniDV tapes and I need to move that video from those tapes to some other storage media.  In the past, I’ve made a few DVDs, but I want to backup the files on a giant external hard drive.

I have just ordered a pair of 500 GB drives and a 4-pin to 4-pin firewire cable.  I’ll begin to transfer videos as soon as theses items arrive.  (My new laptop requires a 4-pin adapter.)

I don’t know a whole lot about video transfer and compression, but I think I know enough to copy the files from the MiniDV tapes to the hard drive.  Any input would be appreciated.