Deep Cleaning - It's a Bit Different For a Store

Last night was another night of interrupted sleep. Fortunately, I have a cushion for Saturdays, so after I awakened at 2:00 am and couldn't seem to get back to sleep, I did a lot of my "dailies" on my phone instead (which take approx 1/2 hour), and then set my alarm for 5:00 am instead of 3:15 am, turned around, and went back to sleep. That turned out beautifully. I awakened at 5:00, did my morning meditation, took my shower, and hit the ground running. I'm writing this, and then moving onward to my day. 

There's no really good reason why I've been waking 
in the middle of the night (although some people 
might consider my normal wake-up time of 3:15 am 
to be the middle of the night too - LOL). I guess I'm 
a bit stressed and it's coming through in my sleep 
patterns. 

DH forgot his phone at home yesterday, and I was too busy to drop it off at the shop for him, so we were communicating anything necessary through Chickie. Fortunately, there wasn't that much that I needed to communicate. The major deal was our fluorescent bulbs. 

We use the single-pin style of fluorescent bulbs 
in our ceiling fixtures throughout the store. We have 
a LOT of fixtures, and a LOT of bulbs - both active 
and burned out. Fluorescent bulbs, of course, are 
an environmental hazard (they use a bit of mercury 
in them), so have to be carefully disposed of. 

We have old ceiling fixtures at the store. They were prime for 1994 when we moved in, but lighting has moved on from this type of ceiling fixture and fluorescent bulbs, into new and more environmentally friendly lighting. In the intervening years, we used to take used bulbs (usually 8 or so at a time) down the street to the little neighborhood hardware store where we would pay a small fee per bulb to get them recycled. Most places, however, these days, won't accept the 8-foot fluorescent bulbs any more. 

This is my local Batteries Plus store (obviously in a different 
season than the deep winter we're in right now). They're 
always great people here, and have helped me out for 
many years. It's a very convenient location, right between 
work and home. 

After an extensive web hunt, I did find that my local Batteries Plus store does accept them, and we have a business account set up with them because I buy all of my batteries for my alarm systems through them, as well as the batteries for my APC units. The store is quite close to home, so I took a quick drive over to double-check that they still accepted them, and what it would cost. It's going to cost us $1.44 per bulb, but no problem bringing them by. I'll start doing that on Sunday, so I made sure Minion was set up to accept the long bulbs. 

We need our old documents and papers to have this look, 
instead of being readable. I remember working one job 
where they actually had an industrial-sized shredder next 
to their machine shop, and I had to go down and shred old 
blueprints regularly. We simply can't do what we have set 
aside on our own - we'll have to hire a firm to come and 
shred the 40 or more boxes of paperwork for us. 

Time to start the next phase of clearing out the store. After this, we'll have to get a shredding company over to take the multitudes of boxes of paperwork that we've been stacking up for recycling away. That comprises up to 50 years of financial reports, old corporate paperwork, and other items that we simply don't need to keep on hand any more. DH has put aside the items we will need to keep, but we simply don't need our entire corporate history day-by-day forever. That will be an expense, but it's again, a necessary one. 

What a great sign. I could use a few of these in my life. 

On that cleaning-up note, I'm going to plug in some photos and call today's blog a done deal. I hope you have a truly wonderful Saturday and a great weekend. I'll be back on Monday. Slava Ukraini.