Thursday, May 23, 2013

Past Deadline: Fifth Dimension Revealed

Published in The Perth Courier, May 16/13.

Fifth dimension revealed
Recently I wrote about the satisfying feeling I had from sorting toy bins under the futon and rediscovering the hardwood floor there.
(Yes, small things.)
Even before that, in February, I wrote about the “fifth dimension,” which former roommates and I had defined as the place where lost things go.
I have determined, thanks to a spate of marathon decluttering on Saturday, that the fifth dimension may be in my home office.
Because I know you are devoted readers who hang upon my every word and commit it all to memory (eye roll), you likely recall that when I wrote “Where the lost things are” I mentioned the disappearance of my penny book.
I’ve had the little coin-collection book with the special sleeves since I was a kid, and it always lived in the bookcase with my encyclopedias until I purged those a few years back. I moved the penny book “to a safe place” and haven’t seen it since.
I hate those safe places. They defeat me every time.
I had been hoping to rediscover the book before all of the pennies currently in circulation disappear because I was several years behind. I knew I had pennies dating back to sometime in the 1930s, but I wasn’t sure where I had left off.
In that same column, I mentioned how I had misplaced my ancient iPod – the one that is so old it doesn’t connect to the Interwebs and, thusly, does not come equipped with that handy “find the iPod” app. I keep it on my desk. It disappeared. I tore my teeny tiny office apart trying to find it. I figured it must have fallen into the garbage pail or recycle bin and was gone forever.
Then it suddenly reappeared from beneath a pad of Post-It Notes – on my desk.
Fifth dimension?
Last week I noticed some of the shelves in my office bookcase were so laden with files and books they were starting to wow (and not a happy “Wow!”), and some of the lightweight backing on the case was being pushed out.
Obviously some serious purging was overdue.
Trouble is, like any sort of decluttering in my house, you can’t purge one area without purging another. It becomes a “project.”
I store older files in another part of the house, so before I could remove office files to storage, I needed to sort through the stored files first. Some of them were so old they were growing silver nose hairs.
What?
Anyway, I filled a blue bin and a garbage bag with crud from the storage area, then moved everything off the bookcase in my office, sorted it, fixed the bookcase and filled it up again.
It took hours, but I think I removed about 50 pounds of old files and at least a pound of dust. The recycling guy is going to have a lot of blue boxes to dump this week.
And guess what I found?
Yep – the penny book.
The penny book!
The penny book!
Fifth dimension for sure.
I can now verify that my collection dates back to 1938 and that I had every penny up to and including 1999. I sat on the floor on Mother’s Day and managed to update the collection to 2012, except for 2004 (but I have a jar or two to check yet).
Maybe the kids can go on the Interwebs and see if any of the coins I collected haphazardly back in the 1980s are special.
Meanwhile, I’m going to put the penny book in a safe place.
And if you’ve lost anything, let me know and I will check my spooky office for you.

No comments: