The Clutter Reports

The Declutter Checklist: 2026

January 10, 2026

ShadowWing Tronix general organizing/cleaning articles 1 Comment

Hope To Have Done In 2026

These will be marked done but this part of the list will only be up for 2026. Hopefully none of these crossover to 2027.

Clear The RSS Feeds

current count: 120, mostly videos, but one video feed is so long that my reader only lists the last 50. Might be high for awhile. Hoping to watch one a day plus stay caught up on articles and webcomics

Clean out under the pinball machine

It’s a mess under there. This mostly means organizing my VHS tapes and other things that ended up under there.

Clearing behind the toybox

This one I don’t know if I’ll complete or not. I can’t get to the storage alcove because the door is behind where I have my toybox, where I now change and store my shoes, and there’s a bunch of stuff between the door and the box. I want to see if anything can be done with at least some of it.

Go over my microphones

I have a bunch of old and (thanks a friend) newer microphones. I want to see what is usable, and then figure out what to do with the ones I can’t use. You’d be amazed what there’s a market for when it comes to old gear for the reasons I want to see what I can make work.

Go over my art supplies

All my pens and paper’s mostly. Most of my art lately has been digital but I want to do something with all the papers I have. Even all the below lists will require the right notebook, and I want to redo the art supply drawer dividers. What’s there now is a good proof of concept but I need to alter the design and use stronger cardboard. I can’t do that until I go over what I have.

List all my games

Apart from the PC games I have an Atari 800, NES, GBA, CD-I, and some old LCD handheld games. I kind of have partial list with my old high scores list but I really want to have a definite list.

List all my software

I’ll be making lists of various games and other software and divide them by operating system. Then I’ll see what I do and don’t need and choose my next options.

How many wires do I have?

HDMI, audio cables, who knows what else? I organized them but I don’t have a list of all the stuff I have that I can easily go through without digging the bags out. I want to check at a glance what I have in case I need to use them.

Long Term Goals

I would be surprised if these are done this year. At least I hope to make progress on them, but if I do complete one, that will be very cool.

Clear out the YouTube backlog

Long term goal. Still too many to count

Selling off comics I don’t want

This might end up getting done this year, depending on whether or not I can sell off the ones already partitioned off and if I want to add to it in the next run-through.

Selling off toys I don’t want

Mostly Transformers and action figures. Once that’s done I’ll look into making a place to display the figures I’m keeping so I can create a different diorama every month.

Complete list and scan of every comics I own

I want to know every comic I have after I sell them and have digital versions of my collection for my own use. I won’t upload them for pirating but it would be a benefit to my other site. This includes scans of comics I want to get rid of just because of the other site.

Complete list of the music I own

I have enough for this year’s goals, so I’m putting a list of all the records, tapes, and CDs I own.

List all my home videos

VHS, DVD, and a few video CDs plus anything I recorded myself in various formats. I want to know all the videos I own before I decide what to do with them next.

Choosing The Right Notebook

January 18, 2026

ShadowWing Tronix general organizing/cleaning articles binder, checklist, notebook Leave a comment

One of my goals for this year is to make a list of stuff I own. Not everything, just the stuff I have put away that I might need. Mostly this means electronics. The problem is how to go about it.

Over the Christmas break I tested out using a series of index cards to keep track of my Christmas decorations. While I think I might want to change the way I laid it all out, following them to put the decorations away worked out. It’s not a perfect checklist because I don’t think the formatting worked as I hoped but I’m confident I actually didn’t forget one like I’ve done most years. It’s an experiment that will continue next Christmas when I put them out again.

I could do this mission with a spreadsheet, but that means bringing up the program, finding the right sheet, and while it sounds easy this could actually be a hassle when all I want to do is see if I have the right HDMI or audio cable. Somehow I have managed to gain a bunch of notebooks, possibly too many notebooks. So picking one should be easy to make the checklist I want. Right? Sometimes you can have too many choices if none of them are right for the task. Fortunately I figured out a great way to use something else I wasn’t sure if I could use until now.

My 2026 Decluttering Goals

January 11, 2026

ShadowWing Tronix general organizing/cleaning articles update Leave a comment

I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m starting 2026 with a brand new declutter goal checklist. Last year I managed to hit some of my goals…using the 2024 goals as my guide. I made one goal in 2024 and a couple more in 2025. Clearly the list had some flaws given my scheduling issues and just how big my RSS feed backlog is, especially when it comes to video content. It’s all I have left so long as I keep up with the articles and webcomics I try to read everyday. So far I’ve kept up with that but the video backlog is still way too massive.

In all I did three of the eight projects on that list. Using the same list every year and just adding another year feels like a bad motivational plan. So I decided to do something smart. It’s rare but it happens now and then. So I redid my entire list with what I hope is a bit more common sense, one that I could adjust every year. With a better idea of what is and isn’t achievable, I separated the list into two parts: goals I think I can accomplish this year, and more long term decluttering goals.

This is my assessment article. I want to examine what I pulled off last year not only in my checklist but on this site, with a look to how to improve both. I kind of went over it in part in last week’s video but this is focused on the declutter side of things. As I prepare to start my 2026 declutter journey what does my current situation look like?

My Plans For 2026

January 4, 2026

ShadowWing Tronix general organizing/cleaning articles update, v-log Leave a comment

Sorry for how rambly this is and that I keep jumping between topics. You can scroll through to follow the topic–videos, BW Media Spotlight, or The Clutter Reports–that interest you. I redid this enough times and I don’t want to do it again. Regular content returns next week.

Christmas Decorations 2025

December 7, 2025

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Of course this is when I bow out to focus on Christmas projects, but I do plan a new declutter goal checklist when I do. Merry Christmas (or whatever you celebrate, or just have a great month) and Happy New Year!

Putting Out The 2025 Christmas Decorations

November 30, 2025

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Saturday, when I usually do the declutter projects, was a washout. Nothing went right, so nothing went out. This week I started putting out the decorations, but as I write this only part of them have come out.

Part of the delay is that I’m trying to give myself less of a headache by creating a checklist of Christmas decorations. Right now I’m just working on a spreadsheet because it’s faster, but I’m going to turn it into a list of every decoration that should be in every box when I go to put them away. Last year was the first time I didn’t end up with a Christmas decoration left out, not spotted until everything had been put away months ago. The chart will also have a layout of how to put the smaller boxes in the big box so I don’t spend the end of decorating and undecorating trying to get everything back in place.

When that’s all done and everything’s all decorated I’ll do the usual post before taking the time off to finish my Christmas superhero comic (hopefully on time this year) and other things I need to do. Then upon my return I’ll assess what I got done this year (very little) and rather than import the current goal list to the next year–again–I’ll create a brand new list of goals that hopefully I’ll actually achieve. Many of the current checklist’s undone ideas will still be going up.

Have a Merry Christmas, one and all. Hopefully next year there won’t be as many hospital and doctor visits for my dad or me and I can focus on pulling myself together.

Quick Report> Another Goal Reached

November 23, 2025

ShadowWing Tronix general organizing/cleaning articles computer, computer clutter, files, virtual clutter Leave a comment

If you look at the goal posting for 2024/2025 (I’m going to do a whole new one for 2026), I have another of my goals achieved. This was a somewhat minor goal, but one I needed to get done. Now the computers have all been backed up so if something happens to them I have less chance of losing important information. That’s a relief. I just wish it hadn’t taken so long and that this wasn’t probably the last goal I’ll have time for before the year ends.

Maybe I’ll get the RSS feeds cleaned out? It’s still all video content, which takes up time I could be spending on other projects, and time has been one thing I haven’t been allowed. Between my illnesses and tiredness, dad’s surgery this year and everything leading up to it, and other distractions I haven’t been able to set up the producing schedule I want and time is growing shorter. Nobody’s getting any younger here. I did managed to clean out a few of those videos this week. So that’s something.

I also had to do some email maintenance. One of the goals completed earlier this year was getting caught up on email, but if I miss too many days I have to do it again. Plus I got to go through stuff I was waiting to read for later and organize or delete them. So that was done.

Next year’s checklist is going to include stuff I was hoping to do this year–and even more annoyingly the year before that. I’m trying to focus on the wins I have but I still haven’t met my goals both in decluttering and in other projects, and I’m annoyed by that. With luck 2026 will be what this year couldn’t. The Christmas decorations will be coming out soon, but if I can find projects that work around those maybe I can start or even finish another goal before New Years. We’ll have to see what happens.

Two Videos On Physical Media’s Comeback

November 16, 2025

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I didn’t have time to do much of anything this week. Some mild sleep issues early in the week, other activities that took up free time, et cetera. So I was going to do another video post of examining a new declutter method. Then I found a video in my “for later articles” playlist I usually use for my other site had a video more inclined to this site, about physical media. From there I was recommended another one by YouTube and decided to use them both.

Despite trying to declutter my home, my computer, and my life, I am no minimalist. One of the reasons is I still believe in physical media: comics, books, tapes, CDs, cartridges, and so on. Shoving everything into a digital format risks losing something if the machine is broken, you need power to run things, streaming options are only available when they still have the license, and they can be edited for time, content, or aspect ratio. I hate when they censor something that isn’t on TV (though some TV censored words are hilarious–look up the TV edit for Snakes On A Plane and hear some of my favorite replacement curses that I actually use myself now) and I really hate when they change something originally aired and produced for the old square TVs to fill a modern rectangular screen, for the same reason some people preferred letterbox to “pan and scan”–that you miss something that was in the part that was cropped out.

The following videos come up with extra reasons. The shorter one makes the case that the experience and our connection to the media is weakened somehow in the streaming format versus actually reaching for the media. He focuses on video. The second one, longer and with some swearing (I keep my stuff swear free on both sites so I have a habit of warning about that and letting you decide whether or not to watch it) takes a more philosophical approach to why the physical media experience is making a comeback, focuses more on the music side but does have a defense of DVDs. (No love for VHS and Betamax.) He also discusses collecting versus hoarding if that helps you decide whether or not to watch it.

Book Report> Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image

November 9, 2025

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It took me a year to read this book. Admittedly, reading a chapter or two a day (depending on chapter length) for my chapter by chapter review of the book played a part in that, but it’s also a very long book at 436 pages and 78 chapters. At last I have finished reading the second book in Tom Clancy’s Op-Center series, Mirror Image and it’s about time. The second book in the Op-Center series, Clancy and co-creator Steve Pieczenik, plus ghostwriter Jeff Rovin, have improved on the first book, but not in enough areas.

I did read and review the first book in the series, simply titled Tom Clancy’s Op-Center and wasn’t impressed by it. The franchise focuses on the actions of the National Crisis Management Center, aka “Op-Center”, a US crisis management group with their own military team, codenamed “Striker”. The first book dealt with a bombing in South Korea as part of a conspiracy to keep them and North Korea from ever achieving unity thanks to the group consisting of members of both Korean militaries who wanted to fight each other so bad they worked together to keep them separate, sure that the two countries could never work together. I think we can see the stupidity of that perspective because hate isn’t making us dumb. It suffered from the series characters being annoying while the guest characters were more worth reading about, and padding with history and worldbuilding.

The sequel novel was rather poorly timed for me reading it, as it involved a Russia invading the Ukraine just as such actions were starting in the real world in 2025. The novel takes place slightly into the future, only a few years, and came out in November of 1995 from Berkley Books. It’s not the main focus of the story; that would be the Russians creating their own “Op-Center” as part of a coup attempt, but the shadow of trouble at the Russian/Ukrainian border in light of an actual war going on was weirdly timed. i bought the three books I have in this series based on the reputation of Tom Clancy so I didn’t know this was coming. Like I said, that’s not the focus of the book.

No Project This Week

November 2, 2025

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So I tried again to get 86Box running on my computer. I still can’t get it to find the file that will set up Windows 95 on the fake computer. That took up Friday, when I usually work on the comic. So I spent Saturday working on the comic and didn’t have time to set anything up here.

I’m not happy with how this year has gone. Much of it may have been out of my hands, but a side project is still a project. I’ve made some headway but not as much as I would have liked. Not giving up, though. I’ll try a different program for the retro computer games or maybe I’ll actually learn what I’m doing wrong with this one. I still want to accomplish as many goals as possible, but I think next year I’m going to focus on completing goals and not just what would make a good article. I just need to find other article topics.

Sorry for another lame post, but I am working on stuff, minor decluttering is getting done, and while I’m not where I want to be, I am better than I was. Having hope for next week.