Moving over to OregonLive...

Okay kids, the Sellwood blog is moving to OregonLive. Hope to see you there!

Dump your junk this Saturday

According to the SMILE neighborhood website, this Saturday May 21st is the 26th Annual Sellwood-Westmoreland Cleanup Day. So if you have a lot of junk sitting around your house, and you're not planning on selling it during the neighborhood garage sale, you can take it to the Westmoreland Park parking lot between 9 am and 2 pm.

Accepted:

• yard debris
• junk from the basement and garage
• scrap wood
• unwanted furniture and appliances
• metal

Not accepted:

• food garbage
• plaster
• concrete
• dirt
• sheet rock
• aerosol cans
• hazardous materials
• anything else not accepted at the landfill

The prices for dumping your junk are $5-10 for a car or station wagon, $10-15 for a small pickup, $15-25 for a large pickup, $25-up for large vehicles, $15 surcharge for accepting appliances containing Freon (refrigerators, air conditioners), and a surcharge of $10 for computer monitors. You must present proof that you are a Sellwood-Westmoreland resident (such as a driver's license) at the dump site.

If we can't have a new bridge, maybe we need a ferry

As a resident of Sellwood who lives south of Tacoma and west of 13th (ie. close to the Sellwood Bridge) I was pretty darn disappointed that they took away bus 40. I'm for bridge safety as much as the next guy, so I guess I shouldn't be unhappy about the restrictions on our old bridge, but it was nice having a semi-direct route downtown. My husband was especially disappointed, as he works in John's Landing, just on the other side of the bridge, down Macadam Ave. (His disappointment was assuaged a bit by the joy of unicycling to work.)

Sometime when I wasn't looking (or really, sometime shortly after I had a baby) Tri-Met added bus 41T to Sellwood, which takes Sellwood-Westmoreland residents downtown via the Hawthorne Bridge instead. I'll be honest and say I have never ridden the 41T. Apparently not many other people are riding it either. The SMILE newsletter says that the 41T averages 6 passengers per hour, and Tri-Met is thinking about shutting the line down if ridership doesn't go up soon. If they take this bus away Sellwood will be again cut off to direct bus access to downtown (though you can ride bus 70 and transfer to the 33). Maybe we should get a new bridge! Oh wait...tens of billions of dollars short. About that ferry idea...

Yarn store and coffee shop coming to Sellwood

I saw over at the Kennilworth-Abernethy blog that soon there will be a new yarn store in town, and it's going to be located in Sellwood. Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks will be offering classes, knitting clubs, knitting getaways, as well as selling yarn and coffee. I'm already a big fan of Mabel's so I hope this place will be just as cozy and welcoming because it's a lot closer! Abundant Yarn will be at the intersection of 17th and Sherrett.

When will the "prime Sellwood location" be ready?

I could be wrong, but it seems as though work on that old building on 13th has stopped. I never see trucks or construction workers there when I walk by. I thought they were just working on the inside of the building, and maybe that's the case, but it really appears that nothing has changed since I took that photo a month ago. The outside is still the same as the picture. And yet even last week Windermere was advertising it as available for occupancy on May 1st. I wonder if they're having a hard time finding renters?

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

Are some of them sex offenders? Someone pointed out this website the other day which has the sex offender data for a bunch of states including Oregon. You type in your zipcode and it brings up a list. I entered Sellwood's zipcode, 97202, and it brought up the list. It lists names and addresses (and yes, some of them were in Sellwood), but it does not say what kind of crime they committed. Would I want to know? I'm not sure. This discussion points out that the term "sex offender" isn't always what we might think. Still I'm glad the registry is available to the public.

Spring cleaning for summer selling

Our house is a two bedroom, two bathroom house. It was the perfect size for a couple who had only lived in apartments or shared houses before. We had just the right amount of furniture for this house. It was also what we could afford in Sellwood.

Two years, one baby, one cat, and a bunch of stuff later, it's feeling kind of small. Babies, especially, have so many accessories: the crib, the changing table, dresser, toys, high chair, toys, sippy cups, bottles, breast pumps, toys, slings, back packs, diapers, and more toys. And then there are all the clothes he grows out of in just a few months.

Last week I started cleaning out the bookshelf, replacing the photo albums and hefty coffeetable books on the bottom two shelves with board books, stuffed animals, and plastic donuts. I ended up reorganizing the whole bookshelfing and was left with a big bag of books I no longer wanted. Then the thought struck me: garage sale!

I've seen a couple of mentions recently of the Sellwood/Moreland neighborhood garage sale happening this summer, and it seems like a good idea. So I'm signing myself up! And now that I've made the decision, I'm looking around my house, at each object, and asking "Could I sell that?" Yes! As I trip over another tennis ball or pile of books, I am about ready to sell anything that's not nailed down.

Are any of you other Sellwood/Moreland people going to do this? This is my first garage sale ever so if anyone has any good garage sale tips, I'd appreciate them!