#think there was a caching issue with Blender

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Month 1, day 29

Oof, tonight was almost a bust. The first tutorial I tried was a fluid simulation that kept crashing Blender, the second one was a material tutorial for snow covered rocky ground that would not play nice with itself, and this is the third one I tried

It's not supposed to look like this. It's cool! Don't get me wrong! And I'm sure I can find ways to use it in the future. It's just not supposed to look like this lol

[argumate]

you're clearly often implicitly /aware/ that you're wrong about or at least don't know how to contest something, but you don't announce that this has happened: you just pivot to a new angle. it's not only a problem from the point of view of etiquette & granting your argupartner the satisfaction of being right; i think it's also part of the reason you often wind up talking past people who aren't used to your style, as they mistakenly assume you're still arguing for a point you've given up on.

I’ll have to try and catch myself in the act, but there are definitely differing conversational styles at play here, for example there is a kind of engineer dialogue that runs something like this:

Alice: so we use the index as a cache key to avoid recomputing the field--

Bob: what if it’s negative?

Alice: doesn’t matter, we’re treating it as unsigned and hashing it anyway.

Bob: are we vulnerable to collision attacks?

Alice: possibly, but the hash is reasonably secure and there are easier ways that a malicious user could arrange denial of service.

Bob: will cache memory usage be a problem for large requests?

Alice: I don’t think so, we clear the cache after each session, but we could always cap it at some maximum just in case.

Bob: okay then what happens?

there are several ways to read this as a positive exchange even as Bob aggressively hunts around for edge cases and weaknesses: they are helping Alice by checking for potential issues while prompting them during a walkthrough to help explain the design to others, they are trying to understand the design themselves as efficiently as possible by zeroing in on the parts that they don’t understand or that seem the most suspicious, and they are displaying a lot of attention and engagement with what Alice is saying.

however you can also read this as Bob attempting to humiliate or discomfit Alice by raising a flurry of pointless questions instead of trusting that Alice has already handled these issues, or perhaps Bob is trying to show off to the audience and demonstrate superior ability by trying to catch Alice out in a mistake, or maybe Bob is being abrasive and rude by not softening their speech: “I’m struggling to understand this aspect of the design, would you be able to tell me what happens if the blah blah? Oh I see! Thank you, that makes sense to me now, forgive me for interrupting, please continue,” etc.

and of course any of these interpretations could be true! you would need to know more about Alice and Bob and their personalities and preferred interaction styles and previous history and work environment in order to judge the emotional undercurrents of this dialogue, but it’s easy to see how misunderstandings can happen and people can end up thinking of each other as jerks (”they keep trolling me!” / ”I’m only trying to help!”).

social media amplifies this difficulty by stripping out a lot of shared history and context and tone and body language and putting the whole thing in a blender and then the conversation takes place in front of an audience of enraged baboons who tag team both participants, so it’s unsurprising that there are hurt feelings and missed connections.

none of which is meant to excuse deliberately being a jerk of course, it’s just that sometimes the solution for incompatible communication styles is to find other people with more compatible communication styles.

[badwitchgame]

Pen per concept

I found a concept art of a pen / shed on imgur and I thought it would be a good practice to make it in Blender. It didn’t go as planned I’m quite rusty when it comes to making stuff.

https://imgur.com/gallery/cH6y3UV

 concept made by  Roslagen796 on imgur

I first created a blockout, but then accidentally deleted most of it with no hope of restoring. But luckily I had most of what I’ll need, 4 beams (probably could have got away with 3), mushroom, rope, hay bed, metal chains and rings, barrel and bowl, and finally ivy vines, grass and flowers too.. Quite average for a scene, and to be honest there was nothing extraordinary in it, just beams, some small props and foliage.  I started making the beams, low poly, high poly, baked PBR maps in Substance Painter. Then the rest, most came out well, but now that I think back at it I noticed errors.. I left the house in beams instead of making 1 model. Some models I made for blender so the textures were generated, so I was not able to properly present them at the end, like the awning. 

I’m getting pretty good at making a fading to black on grass, so I leave it here as a tutorial:

The point is that I have a green color and a darker green color, and I’m mixing the 2 and the factor of how I mix them is based on a linear gradient texture. the texture by default goes horizontally, I added a mapping and texture coordinate nodes and changed rotation. Changing the rotation itself is not enough, that’s why I pushed it up a bit on the original X axis. The only problem with this is that the mesh is bad (for gaming). I used individual blades rotated randomly so it had 536 verts, 204 faces and 448 tris.  For grass, this is insanely high. My initial population of grass around the building resulted in a 5million tris cost for the grass alone. It looked OK though:

There was additional issue with this, the ivy, which for some reason was ~2million tris on the above picture. My Blender crashed frequently, and my space was gone So I had to re-make the grass and the ivy. The grass I managed to reduce to 200 planes, 123 verts, 110 faces, by making a semi-low poly blade composition, then baking it on to a simple square plane and then cutting out the grass in blender. I tried to add add some variety by breaking up the shape and bending it a bit that’s why it had so many verts.. 

this looks much uglier, and not much better performance-wise either, so I still need to work a bit more on my grass.  The ivy was easier, but I had to do that twice again as well.. The first leaf I made was 2million polygons, that I managed to decimate to 40k without any major detail loss, then I arranged the leaves to a vine and tried to make a bigger  arrangement before baking but it did not work, even with a single vine, the poly count was ~10 mil, and when I tried to make an arrangement from that, my Blender crashed multiple times, my free disk space for cache was full etc.. so I ended up making 1 vine only, and I baked that down to a simple plane that was not looking that bad. The overall polycount for the whole scene was 120k verts, 91k faces, 183k tris, and this was the last render in blender with the “optimized” assets:

Technically it’s different, but I don’t really like the overall scene. it’s boring, and I didn’t do it very quickly. Basically it took 3 days more or less.. The whole weekend and Monday too, although admittedly I watched a ton of Netflix as well..  Sketchfab link: https://skfb.ly/otxMZ

[holytheoristtastemaker]

Autodesk has released Maya 2020: the latest update on its 3D modelling, animation, visual effects and 3D rendering software. I've been using Maya for almost two decades now. I remember the days when you needed a Silicon Graphics machine to run it, which was expensive enough, but coupled with the price of a Maya licence you had to spend a small fortune. I'm not sure if the unobtainable price made it a more desirable application, but everyone I knew wanted to work with it. Thankfully, prices dropped over the years and now Maya is much more affordable, although many still think it's too expensive, especially when compared to other applications like Blender and Cinema 4D (both of which appear, along with Maya, on our guide to the best 3D modelling software). Since its early days, Autodesk has released updates annually. These usually saw new tools and features being added to its arsenal; these features were welcome additions, but were often aimed more at higher-end animation and simulation work. Over the past few years, maybe even longer, we have seen a shift in the direction Autodesk have taken with the updates. They are now more focused on improving existing systems and implementing features voted on by the community. This has transformed Maya into a much better, all-round application which continues to evolve and improve in a more focused way. With Maya 2020, Autodesk continue this trend of listening to their users to implement much-needed quality-of-life features. They also enlisted Blue Sky Studios to help mold the animation tools, which have also seen a huge upgrade in this release. Maya 2020: Features and performance Autodesk boast over 60 new animation features, with the biggest being improvements to the animation cache playback. Originally introduced in 2019, cache playback allowed animators to view their work in real time with little or no need for constant playblasts. This was the idea anyway, but it came with limitations. The first was a lack of dynamics support, so it couldn't be used alongside these systems. Image planes still relied on legacy systems, so they were slow and hogged memory, and it wasn't as efficient when used with dense geometry. These issues have all been addressed and make for a smoother experience. Dynamics support is included, using a new layered evaluation system. nParticles, nCloth and nBodies are now supported, with nHair, Bifrost FX and muscle systems coming later. High-resolution geometry or subdivision surface models that used Smooth Mesh were not efficient enough in 2019. They used a lot of memory and were slow to cache. In 2020, the base mesh is stored while smoothing is now handled on the GPU. Speaking of the GPU, another big update this year is Arnold 6 with full GPU rendering support, based on the NVIDIA OptiX ray-tracing engine. This has been in beta for a while but it's nice to see a full release. I've been using this more and more since I installed 2020 – it's so fast, although I am running an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 so I'm not sure how it would run on lower-end cards. I no longer need to render to see model and shader updates, as they are visible in the viewport in, almost, real time. Finally, Maya has the ability to retopologise the densest of models On the modelling side of things, Autodesk have given us Remesh and Retopology tools. "It's about time!" I hear you scream. When combined, these tools will enable clean, quad-based topology but it has limitations. As good as the resulting models are, there are no options to dictate edge flow, so for game art there would still be a lot of clean-up needed. Animators can now see past and future movement with the new ghosting preview tool It seems Autodesk are now taking full advantage of the GPU as it's being used on many other tools to help speed up workflow. The Proximity Wrap tool, which is new to Maya, is an advanced version of the Wrap tool. It too uses the GPU to help calculate how the influenced geometry manipulates the surface model, making for smoother interactions. I'm looking forward to experimenting with this on future facial rigs and custom muscle systems. With Maya 2020, animation has seen significant improvements, as has rigging While we are on the subject of rigging, another new addition I am personally excited about is the introduction of matrix-driven workflows. These are a series of nodes and attributes that make rigs cleaner and less cluttered. With the offsetParentMatrix attribute, constraints could be used less and less, meaning the art of rigging is more streamlined. The one issue I do have with the new rigging tools is they aren't backwards compatible. I have many clients who still use Maya 2017 and 2018, so for me, these shiny new nodes aren't an option just yet. Should you upgrade to Maya 2020? There is so much to be excited about with this release, and I haven't even covered the modelling and speed improvements. All in all, Maya 2020 is an essential upgrade if you're an animation studio. With all the new updates, it could save you a lot of time on your projects.

http://damianfallon.blogspot.com/2020/04/maya-2020-review.html

[componentplanet]

The AMD 3990X Pre-Review and Overclocking World Record Attempt

AMD at CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, Monday, January 6, 2020. (Photography by PaulSakuma.com Photography)

Today, AMD is launching their Ryzen Threadripper 3990X — a 64-core CPU with a base clock of 2.9GHz, a boost clock of 4.3GHz, and a 256MB L3 cache. Originally, our plan was to present a deep-dive review on the CPU, briefly discuss the overclocking project, and follow up with an in-depth article on the overclocking component on Monday.

Unfortunately, a family emergency has yanked me away from the keyboard and that plan is going to need some modification. While I’ve got most of the data I needed for the review, I need some time to pull it together. Instead of burying you in charts and graphs, I’m going to talk a little about this CPU, what I’ve seen, and what I think it means.

First, here’s a little something to whet your appetite:

Stock score on the 3990X: 25,394. The 3970X scores 17,286. At all-core 4GHz, the 3990X is 1.21x faster than stock and 1.81x faster than the 3970X.

As of February 6th, 2020, that’s the highest single-socket Cinebench R20 score in the world, according to HWBot. It’s the fourth-highest Cinebench R20 score overall. I achieved it using an Asus Zenith II Extreme motherboard and AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 3990X at an all-core locked clock of 4GHz on 64 cores. That’s 256GHz altogether, or 0.256THz. While it obviously doesn’t scale the way a 0.256THz single-core CPU would, that’s how fast the CPU is running, in aggregate.

If all goes well, I’ll break that record and formally log the results over the weekend, then talk about the OC project on Monday. I will say this, though — the power and current challenges of operating at a high all-core clock across this many CPUs are formidable. I do not know what the highest clock I can achieve in stable operation is. I hope to answer that question this weekend.

So. With that teaser out of the way, let’s talk about the 3990X and its performance and positioning at stock configurations.

What the 3990X Brings to the Table

The first and most important thing to understand about the 3990X is that this is not a CPU for everyone. The vast majority of applications are not designed to scale this high. Windows itself is not designed to scale this high. Microsoft’s support for more than 64 threads in Windows is a bit of a kludge.

Since Windows Server 2008, Microsoft deals with systems with more than 64 threads in a specific fashion: by creating processor groups. Each group contains up to 64 logical processors (a Hyper-Threading core and a physical core are treated identically), though Microsoft does employ spatial locality awareness to keep a logical core and a physical core part of the same processor group when possible. What this means, however, is that by default, applications can only use 50 percent of the 3990X’s 128 threads. (You can read more on this topic at Bitsum here.) There are ways to get around it — applications can implement their own schedulers that take better advantage of a large-core CPU.

What this means, in aggregate, is that Linux often offers better scaling for the 3990X than Windows does. Rob Williams at Techgage has done a great deal of Linux testing and I’d recommend his article if you want a specific comparison of scaling in this area.

Under Windows, the 3990X shows significant performance uplifts over the 3970X in several areas. Rendering is easily the CPU’s biggest winning category; a number of rendering engines show uplift over the 3990X ranging from 1.3x to 1.6x depending on the application. One of the steps I took for this review was to buy access to the Blender Cloud in order to test some of the professional-quality scenes provided in that system. The more than 30 render tests I ran in Blender alone confirmed that users of this application can look forward to strong scaling, though the exact amount depends on the type of scene. We’ll also examine how the 3990X and the 3970X compare when running multiple workloads simultaneously.

Because Microsoft’s threading engine can’t support more than 64 threads by default, there are a handful of instances where turning SMT off on the 3990X improves performance. We’ll examine those as well and discuss whether there’s a case for the CPU as a 64C/64T chip compared to the 3970X. We’ll include performance figures for Cascade Lake and the 10980XE, not because Intel is directly competing against the 3990X with that chip, but because it’s important to put the best representative figures in that we can, and Intel is currently making its own argument at the $1,000 price point. There are a few tests where the 10980XE pulls ahead, core counts notwithstanding. With a chip this expensive, I wanted to explore the nooks and corners of the performance world.

One reason that this review will take a bit longer to pull together is that I’m also working with different benchmarks than we’ve used before. Applications like Agisoft Metashape, Pix4D, Da Vinci Resolve, and Maya 2020 (with a CPU-stretching benchmark created by Antonio Bosi), plus a heck of a lot of Blending. We’ve got applications where the 3990X proves its own value (if you play in this kind of professional market, at least), and yes, tests that demonstrate you’d really be better off with a 3970X.

We’ll also have more overclocked benchmark results and, if things go my way, a few higher scores to crow about. It’ll be worth the wait.

First Conclusions

I’m going to keep some of my thoughts back for the actual review, but I’ll say this here: The 3990X is a very exciting CPU, even if it isn’t a chip that it makes sense for most people to buy.

Testing this chip reminded me that there was a time when we waited on operating systems and applications to be able to take advantage of CPU features.

The first iteration of Hyper-Threading only worked properly if you ran either XP SP1 (SP1 itself was still fairly new) or had installed SP4 for Windows 2000. We waited on applications to add SSE2 support for the Pentium 4. We waited for a 64-bit Windows and native applications, just as we waited for 32-bit apps and OS support in an earlier era. Now, thanks to the 3990X, we’re waiting for Microsoft to improve how it handles high core-count CPUs.

The Difference in Approach Between AMD and Intel

AMD, to be clear, isn’t the first company to run into this problem with Windows. All of Intel’s high core count CPUs encounter the same issue. Intel, however, has kept its core counts much lower and its price-per-core much higher. The Xeon-W line, which is intended for workstations, scales up to 28 cores in a single socket but offers no dual-socket compatibility. I checked prices at Dell — a dual Xeon Gold 6252 workstation (24C/48T, 2.1GHz base, 3.7GHz Turbo) starts at $10,138. The same system with a Xeon Bronze CPU starts at $1579. That’s an $8559 upgrade fee for two CPUs that offer just 75 percent of the Threadripper 3990X’s core count, at more than twice its base cost.

These price cuts should drive higher core-count CPUs into more professional markets, which will, in turn, encourage Microsoft and Linux developers to better support them.

Finally — because the workstation market doesn’t just respond to core count — we’ll also be examining some performance cases where Cascade Lake remains a better option. Applications that don’t scale particularly well with core count sometimes run significantly better on Intel hardware. I’ll tell you upfront that Cascade Lake does win a few tests against the 3990X. That’s why it’s important to understand the various characteristics of the CPU before buying it.

I regret that I didn’t have the full review finished in time for you to read it this morning. I hope that what I’ve laid out here in my version of a “Coming Soon” gives you something to look forward to — and a fair look at what my thoughts on the CPU are, even if I need a few more days to finish the project.

Now Read:

Intel, AMD Both Claim Wins Based on New Market Share Data

Rumor: Intel Prepping Xeon Cascade Lake Refresh to Fight AMD Epyc

8-Core x86 CPU From China Goes Up for Sale

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/305905-the-amd-3990x-pre-review-and-overclocking-world-record-attempt from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-amd-3990x-pre-review-and.html

[megansmovingfl]

Decluttering for a Move: What to Get Rid of and Where to Begin

One of the best ways to ensure a stress-free move is to declutter your home. Decluttering is also a great way to honor the memories you made in your old home before starting a new chapter. Even if you don’t think your home is very cluttered, chances are you have at least a handful of things lying around that you could do without. The closer you look, the more you’ll find.

There’s no shame in realizing that your home has become a storage unit for broken, surplus, and expired stuff—it happens to everyone. You think you know how much stuff you have until it comes time to move it all to a new home. Suddenly, you’re surrounded by items you didn’t know you had or have never seen before. It’s as if your belongings multiplied when you weren’t looking!

The best time to get rid of all the excess is when you are preparing for a move. Getting rid of items you don’t want or need will save you valuable time, money, and effort. Decluttering before you move means you won’t spend time packing up things you no longer want or need. You’ll use fewer boxes, take up less space on the moving truck, and require fewer movers to help you get everything to your new home.

If you aren’t sure what to part with, follow our room-by-room checklists below. At the end of the checklists, we’ll also give you a few tips for getting started with decluttering.

Decluttering for a Move: Room-by-Room Checklist

The following checklists are organized by room to help you tackle the challenge of decluttering in a systematic way. The time it takes to declutter each room will vary by household, but we recommend spending about one week per room as a rule of thumb.

Kitchen

In the kitchen, you’ll want to get rid of anything that is broken, mismatched, surplus or simply never used. This includes:

Expired food

Sauce packets

Small appliances

Kitchen tools and utensils

Cookware

Plastic containers and lids

Water bottles and coffee tumblers

Old cookbooks

Expired Food

We all have a tendency to keep expired food without even realizing it. The most common culprits are things we don’t use very often, like condiments and sauces. (We’re looking at you, ketchup.) Anything that is expired may not be safe or healthy to consume, so it’s important to get rid of it before you move. Go through your pantry, refrigerator, and cabinets. Get rid of anything that is past its expiration date.

Sauce Packets

Is it just us, or do sauce packets seem to appear out of thin air? Gather up all those old packets and dump them. They’re probably expired anyway!

Small Appliances

Older appliances that are still in working condition should be thoroughly cleaned and donated. But anything that no longer works or has corroded or exposed wiring should be tossed out for safety. And by tossed out, we mean responsibly disposed of. You can even consider recycling old kitchen appliances such as microwaves, blenders, and toasters.

Kitchen Tools and Utensils

Kitchen tools and utensils are common items you may have collected over the years. To declutter these items, consider using Marie Kondo’s approach: gather all of your kitchen utensils in one place and sort them by type or category. This will allow you to see how many of each tool you have. You may be surprised at how many silicone spatulas, tongs, bottle openers (etc.) you’ve amassed. Really, how many measuring cups does one household need? Keep your favorites and donate the rest.

Cookware

Cookie sheets and baking dishes often make up the bulk of surplus cookware. Other items to look for and donate are lids that have no matching pots and the pizza stone you probably never use.

Plastic Containers and Lids

Lonely lids are also a problem when it comes to plastic containers. Attempt to match all of your containers with their corresponding lid, and you will probably find quite a few that no longer have a partner. Donate the containers that are in good condition, and consider recycling the rest. Check the bottom of your plastic containers for the recycling symbol and contact your local recycling plant or waste management department with questions. If your containers are Tupperware® brand, they may be covered under one of the brand’s renowned warranty programs.

Water Bottles and Coffee Tumblers

Whether due to changing fashion, new product design, or a simple fascination with liquid containers, many of us have a growing collection of water bottles and coffee tumblers. Keep the ones you use the most, and donate or trash the rest.

Old Cookbooks

Some people have a cache of cookbooks, others have stacks of recipes torn out of magazines. (And then there are those of us who have both!) However you’re currently storing your recipes, your collection could probably use a thinning out. A great way to declutter your recipes is to scan them and store them digitally. Of course, if you have heirloom cookbooks or recipe cards, we strongly suggest you keep them.

Living Room & Family Room

Living rooms and family rooms are shared spaces that collect items from every person in your household. Often, these rooms are one and the same so we’re grouping them together in this checklist. Take a look around these spaces and scan for items that are old/outdated, broken or that you simply no longer want. Decluttering your living room and family room before a move won’t just make your move easier, it will also bring a sense of calm to these active spaces in the weeks leading up to moving day.

Books

DVDs, CDs, VHS tapes, and cassettes (old media)

DVD and VHS players

Game consoles, gear, and extra controllers

Kids’ toys

Magazines

Pet toys and bedding

Books

We’re not suggesting that you should throw away or give away all your books. However, there are more efficient ways to store and access books now that we have e-reader technology. Books are heavy items to move and require multiple smaller boxes, which leads to more waste. Instead of moving an entire home library, consider looking for electronic versions of books you read often and donate the hard copies. Donate anything you don’t read or will never read to a library or local school. (Let’s be honest, we all have books on our shelves that are more aspirational than practical!) If you have special books that hold sentimental value, definitely put those in the “keep” pile.

DVDs, CDs, VHS Tapes, and Cassettes (Old Media)

It’s common to collect a lot of entertainment items such as movies and CDs over the years. Are there any that you are willing to part with? With the advent of streaming services such as Netflix, Pandora, and Spotify, it’s not necessary to keep large physical collections of music and movies anymore. These are some of the easiest items to declutter before a move. Donate your old media to a library or thrift store. If you have any collector’s editions, it might be worth posting them on Ebay.

DVD and VHS Players

Since you’re already clearing out your old media, you won’t need those old media players! You also won’t need all the cords and cables that come with them. Declutter these items before you move and you’ll thank us. Seriously.

Game Consoles, Gear, and Extra Controllers

If you have kids (or you’re just a kid at heart), you probably have a stash of video games that you can retire from your collection. Just like with old media players, this means you’ll also be able to get rid of all the extra cables and ancillary components that go with your old game systems.

Kids’ Toys

Kids accumulate a lot of stuff. They also go through phases and outgrow things quickly. Anything your kids have outgrown can be donated to benefit another family. Help your kids understand how donating their toys can help other kids experience joy. Also, let help them see that they’re making room for new items so they don’t focus on missing what they are giving up.

Magazines

If you have one or more magazine subscriptions, then you probably have a collection of old magazines you don’t need anymore. Consider converting your subscription to a digital subscription (most publications offer this now), and recycle your old issues. If you’d rather find creative ways to use them, check out this article from NC State University.

Pet Toys and Bedding

Is Fluffy’s favorite toy falling apart? Has the scratching post seen better days? Pets are hard on their stuff. Rather than taking all the old toys and bedding with you when you move, declutter it until you have just a couple of items for each pet. You can (and probably should) get new items to replace the old ones.

Bedrooms

Bedrooms are some of the best places to do major decluttering before a move. Closets and dressers become storage areas that are often inaccessible because of the sheer amount of items they contain. It’s good practice to go through our clothes, shoes, and accessories at least once a year to clear out anything we no longer want or need.

Hangers

Clothes and shoes

Jewelry and accessories

Hangers

Who doesn’t have more hangers than they know what to do with? Extra hangers make for great donations to friends, family, or thrift stores.

Clothes and Shoes

Anything that no longer fits, you haven’t worn in over a year, or you simply no longer like or want should be donated. Find a textile recycling dropoff in your area. Feeling crafty? Repurpose your old clothing! Looking to make a little money on like-new clothing or shoes? Take them to a consignment store.

Jewelry and Accessories

Jewelry and accessories go out of fashion quickly, so there’s lots of decluttering potential here. Keep your special pieces of jewelry, but consider brightening someone else’s day by donating the pieces you no longer wear. Jewelry, along with gently used handbags and belts, can also be brought to a consignment store.

Bathrooms

Like kitchens, bathrooms accumulate items with a shelf life. This should make it easier to declutter your bathrooms before moving. If it’s expired or past its prime, get rid of it.

Expired medicine

Toiletries

Old cosmetics and beauty supplies

Beauty tools (makeup brushes, combs, hair dryers, flat irons, etc)

Expired Medicine

Your medicine cabinet, vanity drawers, and under-sink storage are likely filled with expired Asprin, ointments, and prescription medication. You definitely don’t want to keep these items in your house, much less move them to your new home. Be sure to get rid of expired medicine responsibly—don’t just flush it down the drain or dump it in a trash can. The Drug Enforcement Administration has helpful information on how to properly dispose of medication.

Toiletries

Toiletries may not have an expiration date on them, but there are definitely things you don’t want to pack and move. Almost-empty containers of lotion, liquid soap, and toothpaste can go. Extra (unused) toothbrushes and floss, however, you should probably keep for future use.

Old Cosmetics and Beauty Supplies

Yes, cosmetics and beauty supplies do have a shelf life! Most items will begin to grow bacteria, especially if exposed to heat and moisture. Keep these items far away from your skin, and definitely declutter (dispose of) them before you move.

Beauty Tools

Most households only need one (or maybe two) hairdryers, flat irons, and curling irons. Any more than that is probably excess that can be donated. Combs and brushes can also accumulate over the years, so consider decluttering these items before you move as well. Makeup brushes should be kept clean, and if they’re past their prime or just too dirty to thoroughly sanitize, then consider getting rid of them.

Linen Closets

Is there anything more comforting than a neat and tidy linen closet? Decluttering your closets before moving is a great way to bring a little bit of serenity to your daily life. Linens that you don’t want to get rid of can be used to pack fragile items for more efficient packing.

Linens (towels, blankets, sheets, quilts, and comforters)

Craft and sewing supplies

Linens

Old linens make for excellent donations to animal shelters. They also make great cleaning rags and paint drop cloths! (This will come in handy if you’re planning to stage your house and need to repaint walls.) Look for ways to declutter your linen closet by repurposing your old linens or donating them before you move.

Craft and Sewing Supplies

Unless you plan to have a designated craft room in your new house (or crafting is your hobby), then you probably won’t ever use all the craft and sewing supplies you have tucked away. Rather than simply throwing these items out, consider donating them to a local school, camp, or non-profit.

Garage

The garage—aka the storage room—has a reputation for being jam-packed with all the stuff you should probably get rid of but are keeping for some reason. Use extra discernment when decluttering your garage before moving, with an eye on how much space you’ll have at your new home.

Tools and hardware

Construction materials (plywood, insulation, etc)

Gardening supplies

Camping gear

Parts to appliances you no longer use

Yard décor

Broken items

Party supplies

Kids’ toys

Extra car parts

Miscellaneous

Everyone’s garage looks different, but for almost all of us, the garage is where we put the things we don’t know what to do with. Carefully evaluate everything you’ve been storing. Anything that hasn’t been used in years can be tossed or donated. Broken items (you know, the ones you’ve been meaning to fix but haven’t gotten around to it) should also be tossed or donated. Freecycle is a great way to keep all of this stuff out of landfills and give it a new chance at life.

Home Office

Old documents

Old electronics

Instruction manuals

Old Documents

With everything digitalized nowadays, it’s not always necessary to keep physical copies of documents. While there are exceptions (birth certificates and social security cards, for example), most things can be transferred to your computer or an external hard drive for safe keeping. Any documents older than 7 years are not necessary to keep around. Consider getting a shredder or taking documents with sensitive information to a place like UPS, which offers shredding services.

Old Electronics

Technology is constantly evolving so most of us have old cellphones and other electronics gathering dust in a drawer. Do you really need them? Most electronics can be sold or recycled for their parts.

Instruction Manuals

Giving away lots of electronics or appliances? Make sure you’re not keeping the manuals. If you’re donating items that are still in working condition and you have the manual, go ahead and donate the manual as well. If you are keeping manuals for items you no longer have, then definitely recycle them (if you can) or trash them (if they’re not recyclable).

How to Start Decluttering for a Move

Now that you have your checklists, it’s time to get started! The best place to start decluttering is in the room that contains items you use the least often. This allows you to fully pack or get rid of items without the anxiety that you will need to unpack and use something in the near future. Below are a few more tips to help you on your decluttering journey.

Start Early

As soon as you know you’ll be moving, it’s a good time to start the decluttering process. Don’t try to do it all in one day; start a few months in advance and take your time in each room. It’s a lot less stressful if you give yourself plenty of time to get it done. You’ll also be able to make better decisions and give each item fair consideration instead of ultimately throwing everything in a box to take to the new house because you’ve run out of time.

Prepare

Have plenty of heavy duty trash bags on hand, as well as some moving boxes. You’ll want the trash bags for anything you don’t want to keep and boxes for the things you do want to keep, as well as anything you plan on donating. A shredder is very handy to have for documents older than seven years that you don’t need to take with you. Also, be sure to have plenty of packing tape and packing paper for anything that needs to be wrapped up.

Divide & Conquer

While you’re working on a room, have three piles: keep, toss, and donate. (You can also start an optional fourth pile for anything you’re not sure about yet.) When you’re done with the room, look back at the piles and see if you’d like to make any changes – maybe you’ve decided don’t want to keep something after all and would rather donate it – and then pack them up in their respective bags/boxes.

Be Discerning

It can be very tempting to keep everything. An important thing to keep in mind while decluttering a home for a move is to think about how often you really use an item, where that item will go in the new home, and whether you love it or not. Anything you haven’t used in the last year should probably be tossed or donated, as it’s not likely you’ll need it now if you haven’t in over a year. When it comes to things like décor or clothing, ask yourself if it’s something you truly love. If you don’t have strong feelings about it, get rid of it. Remember, anything you take with you will take up space in the new home. If you don’t love it or need it, leave it behind so you can make room for things you do really want or need.

Keep It Going

Even after you’ve decluttered every room, feel free to add things to each pile as you begin your packing. You may change your mind about certain things as you go or find items as you start packing that you decide you don’t want to take with you after all.

Wrap-Up

So there you have it! Your ultimate guide to decluttering for a move. If all this talk of packing and moving has you stressed, allow us to handle it for you. Megan’s Moving offers premium, full-service moving packages that will make your move a whole lot easier. Get a quote today!

The post Decluttering for a Move: What to Get Rid of and Where to Begin appeared first on Megan's Moving.

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Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

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One of the challenges that regularly comes up when we talk about bug-outs is food for our bug out packs, and even food to stash in caches along the way. Food preservation can be a complicated issue, comparing water needs, calories and nutrients, camping meals or supermarket granola bars, and even if we actually need trail food for a journey of 3-5 days.

Then it expands past a bug-out or initial evac kit, to ways to make or stock foods that can be used for overnight and three-day trips after a disaster has struck. In some cases that proposed trip is following a 3-6-12-18 month shelter-in-place scenario, waiting for a die-off or for calmer times. In other cases, it’s looking at the fact that humanity has always made trips – to the coast, to hunting grounds, to and from winter and summer camps, away from danger, for fishing, for trading, even to visit family.

Happily, those journeys of the past, in peacetime and in war, can help us solve our travel food challenges. In some cases, they’re also methods we can use to just preserve foods, and let us preserve the convenience of dropping something in water to create a meal.

Pemmican

Pemmican is a great travel food that will store well for months in just paper, a full year if kept cool.

Pemmican is one of those well-known long-storage travel foods. The proteins and fats, and the precious calories from those fats, were hugely important to people who were in some ways very nomadic, and to those who might be largely sedentary, but whose opportunities for fats and meats came in very short bursts through the year.

By first separating very lean meats from fats, then processing those into the separate entities of dry beef and suet, they can be recombined into a travel food that will store well for months in just paper, a full year if kept cool. That food can then be eaten as-is, or used to make a soup.

Many, many modern pemmican recipes include “wet” dry fruits like raisins, craisins and currants  – that’s going to significantly shorten the shelf life. A lot of the recipes I see floating around also include a lot of dried fruit, even though some of it is the dry-dry “leather” or “plastic” level of fruits. In some, there’s almost equal ratio of fruit to meat or fats.

That’s not actually how I learned to make it. What I learned is a bit more like this.

My only ties to natives are from the upper East Coast and the Deep South Cherokees who were moved west. So maybe there are tribes out there that really do use as much fruit as meat, and it’s distinctly possible that something got lost in translation in Oklahoma and Wyoming or as tribes merged and disappeared.

I learned to make it at a ratio of about 3-4 parts dried meat, 1-2 parts suet or rendered fat, and at most 0.5-1 part dried vegetation – dried to the point when they, too, can be pounded into a powder.

Undoubtedly, the inclusion of a little bearberry or strawberry leaves would have boosted the Vitamin C, which would have been a huge aid to staying healthy in deep cold and deep snows, and while on the move. There’s also probably to-taste twitches that were used by individuals and groups to improve the palatability.

Some tribes and individuals probably used fruits, or a higher ratio of fruit.

However, once mixed into pemmican, the application of dried fruits, leaves, and roots would have become limited: to food, and to a specific type of food. It no longer would have been possible to doctor them into the drinks, sweets, and herbal remedies that natives regularly used.

So I’m inclined to think that probably the truth from history lies somewhere in the middle (where it usually does), if not leaning just a little towards the “less fruit” side of the house. Some tribes and individuals probably used fruits, or a higher ratio of fruit. Some tribes and individuals probably used a minimum of fruit or none at all, packing more of the preserved harvest of spring and summer separately.

Natives wouldn’t be the last to separate their meat and vegetables for long trips and long storage, if so.

Instant Soup in the Old Days

Portable soup tends to vary from a veggie-based medley to a meat version

Also called pocket soup, portable soup was made back in the days of the colonists and explorers of old. It was the equivalent of the broth base we can get in cubes and powders today – fast and easy, and with the potential to be not only flavorful, but to boost nutrients the way a bone broth can.

The descriptions given for pocket or portable soup tends to vary from a veggie-based medley to a meat version, such as the one demonstrated by James Townsend.

Lewis and Clark’s expedition wasn’t overly fond of theirs, which to me sounds similar to desiccated vegetables, but during the American Revolution, others took a more kindly view.

Either recipe gives us a way to produce our own instant soups and broths for convenience at home, and have something hearty in our pockets to dissolve into a warming drink or meal, now and in a potential future where supply chains are disrupted.

Desiccated Vegetables

Mmm, sounds yummy, right? We’re not just talking dehydrated/dried veggies here. Desiccated vegetables are a combination of starchy veg and leafy root veggies, either minced and mixed up or layered, that are pressed under high pressure to remove moisture.

Most of the references to its use are from the Civil War here in the U.S. , with citation back to the Crimean War about fifty years earlier. It was highly recommended by the author of “Prairie Traveler” in the 1940s. There are sometimes mentions of it or similar-sounding ship’s food in naval journals from the same general pre-Antebellum period, where the cakes or planks of desiccated vegetables served the same purpose – providing much-needed vegetables to prevent scurvy in forces that were largely eating hardtack or similar foods for long periods of time.

Some recipes list the inclusion of beans or peas, most likely lentils and the starchier peas once grown far more widely. In all likelihood, these were collected green or were pre-soaked or cooked to soften, as opposed to pressed in as hard and dry legumes. It’s possible, though, that they were pre-ground separately.

The mash that resulted was indented or separated into disks before drying, to allow for apportioning either on an individual basis, or by some accounts, into servings for four or five or eight souls. It wasn’t always a preferred food, but it definitely did its job of keeping folks healthier.

Long Live Desiccated Veggies!

You can make leather or chips or thin cakes out of darn near anything.

We might not go for a monster press to create a handful of cakes for our backpacks or caches, but we can apply some of the ease of a full-meal drop-in if we want, cooking and then dehydrating molds of mixed veggies made using our ice-cube trays.

Some of us already dehydrate mini black bean patties and cooked slices of sweet potato to make serving-sized portions. There’s also a common backpacking trick of dehydrating everything http://www.backpackingchef.com/dehydrating-food.html from fat-free refried beans to spaghetti sauce, applesauce to mashed potatoes, turning it into thin, flexible leathers or hard chips.

Spin it through a blender (with some water if necessary) and spread it thin on waxed paper or butcher’s paper, and you can make leather or chips or thin cakes out of darn near anything. They typically don’t store as long as those 1800’s lumps, though. For many, we’re looking at a handful of months, especially if we aren’t super careful about the inclusion of fats.

There are commercial alternatives, if we’re not interested in making our own.

Pocket Soup Still Going Strong

Erbswurst is compact rolls of five or six disks that dissolve into a pretty tasty and surprisingly textured lentil soup

I ran into Erbswurst while deployed in a multi-national force. They’re compact rolls of five or six disks that dissolve into a pretty tasty and surprisingly textured lentil soup (never add as much water as a soup manufacturer calls for). It does better if you bash it a couple of times to increase surface area, or you can stick it in some water and over a fire, and usually about the same time it starts simmering, it’s started to dissolve.

It’s tougher to find in the U.S. but as the internet shrinks our world, we can pay the shipping for it, or, we can look at similar soup options.

It might not be quite as compact, but we can absolutely portion out things like Bear Creek’s split pea soup when we’re ready to roll or from the get-go. Dr. McDougall has some of those instant cups and packets of split pea and barley that we can store for a good while or repackage for longer shelf life.

So, why am I name dropping those specifically, and sticking to split pea and lentil soups?

Because they have no dairy or meats in them to go rancid early in storage or due to temperature fluctuations. Lentils aren’t calorie powerhouses, but compare a lentil or pea soup to the same serving size of non-dairy instant veggie-based soups. You’ll find that there’s a pretty significant difference there. There’s a whole lot more calorie – and nutrients – than ramen, and it’s in a far more compact form than noodles. They cook faster than the just-add-water offerings that have beans and lentils in them, and even rice in a lot of cases. Those particular options are also satisfying; textured, as opposed to others that are just broth or some of the other pureed and creamed soups on the market.

We can absolutely make our own dry mixes, and we have ways of making especially flaked beans cook faster, or we can prepare something, blitz it in the blender, and dehydrate it in cubes or patties. If we’re going to buy, though, we might as well make sure we’re buying something that checks as many blocks as possible.

Calories, protein, vitamins, fiber, and lasting satiety from food is something I tend to consider, whether I’m sticking it in a backpack for a fun weekend, packing it away so there’s something available on a trail later, or sticking it in my pantries to make fast and easy meals, now or later.

Trail Foods from History

Whoa, whoa, whoa, cowboy; you can’t sum up yet, you missed hardtack. – I skipped hardtack. I gave my opinion about hardtack in an article about bread options for disaster cooking. I don’t really consider fully dried hardtack much of a trail food (although we could carry peanut butter jars to soak it in daily).

And that’s what we’re talking: Trail food.

There are a lot of reasons we might hit the trail and live out of a bag or off caches in the coming years. Pleasure packing, exploration, intelligence gathering, evacuations, hunting trips, relocation, travel for family reunions – they were done in all of the preceding centuries of recorded history, and they’ll continue to be done for the foreseeable future, no matter what it’s course. Happily, history provides a number of to keep us well-fed during our travels, things we can make at home now or later, and in some cases, readily available commercial options for the less DIY crowd.

In some cases, foods that were traditionally for the trail can also just give us a faster, easier meals – as we’re accustomed to – compared to preparing everything from scratch.

Historic trail foods also have another major benefit: They largely use heat at some point, but otherwise, there are few or no preservatives, and there is no need for fresh canning jar lids. That means if we’re running short of salt, sugar, vinegar, or pectin, or a pressure canner goes down, we still have viable means to get our foods from one harvest season to the next, just as some native tribes and northern explorers once did.

The post Trail Foods from History – Food Preservation Ideas appeared first on The Prepper Journal.

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