Tiny Tuesday!

Tom took this week as a vacation, and yesterday and today, Lindsey has been here helping organize and purge all the things in what Tom calls “the shed” and I call “onsite storage,” because it sounds nicer than “shed.” It had a lot of stuff that belonged to the previous owner, and after eight years, that’s now been absorbed into our things or properly disposed of.

Onsite storage (it needs a new name; I’ll check out various British estates for one) also contains all our yard tools, lawnmower, and edger; grilling stuff; and any hardware or tools related to the million things a home or three seems to always need. But it also holds sentimentally precious things: mementos of my parents and of Tom and me, and the biggest space taker, our Christmas ornaments and decorations. By organizing and cleaning that room, we’re able to move a lot of things out of our inside closets and off our shelves. All the stuff inside stays organized, but if there’s room out there, and these aren’t things we often access, there’s no reason for them to take space for things we do keep at hand (books, sewing and craft supplies, DVDs and music, games and puzzles, and office supplies, for example).

When I was consolidating some of Tom’s mementos from three different boxes into a single bin, I spotted that brass seal and decided I wanted him to move to one of the curio cabinets. When Tom saw him on the table, he offered full disclosure: The seal was a gift from a woman he once dated when he was a cook at TGI Friday’s. She was a waitress. Honestly, this makes it even better as far as I’m concerned. I like that he held on to things from the years before he met me.

Lindsey’s job will be finished today, I think, but I’ll still have the Christmas stuff to cull, reorganize, and relabel. I’m sure I’ll be donating some of it. We’ve donated a lot of stuff already. Having found lots of little treasures through the years at thrift stores and antique stores, I know that damn near anything can find an appreciative buyer. It’s why eBay and Amazon sellers exist.