Yesterday, Lindsey finished the Lean To (that’s my new name for the “shed,” aka “onsite storage” space). Below is supposed to be my next job, but I’m avoiding it.
Fifteen bins of Christmas decorations and ornaments that require reorganization and some purging. Tom and I made this a major effort a few years back, but these things have a tendency to increase, and some of them are not stored as efficiently as they could be. Also, there are some things of Mother’s I plan to send to some of her grandchildren. They should have a chance to decide whether there’s anything they want, and if not, they can donate it. My feelings won’t be hurt.
Instead of that, today, I worked on reorganizing the craft shelves in the office and getting them in order. There were things to purge from those, too, but mostly we have the room now to put some of that into the Lean To or on the Hall’s closet shelves. Plus everything is labeled now, so I can find what I’m looking for!
Top shelf is fabric for doll clothes. Beneath that, sketch books and coloring books! (And I just added four more. Ridiculous.) Next shelf has my cases of 45 records (undamaged by 2017 flood!) and the albums I either replaced or could save in 2017. Quite a far cry from the hundreds I once had. The shelf below that has to do with writing: the 1990s drafts of the books I’m working on now; the Moleskines that are filled with thoughts and souvenirs; and my Magnetic Poetry collection. The bottom shelf has a couple of bins of mementos (one says Lynne, because she’s the only one who might want any of that if I kick off), and that’s the Christmas box I keep inside the house all year, with all the info I need for Christmas cards, plus tape, pens, gift tags, etc. Things that I require before we start decorating at the holidays.
Those are coloring supplies, craft papers, and stamps and stencils on the top shelf, along with something I got I think my 2022 birthday, from Rhonda and Lindsey. I need to share it on here sometime. It’s very Zen. Yes, the inside of the door from the part of Mother’s china cabinet (we saved the hutch top) that was too damaged to keep post-flood remains on full display: her 1996 Clinton-Gore bumper sticker. Next shelf is all my sewing stuff. It had been here originally, then I used that shelf for albums, and I missed looking over and seeing my sewing machine. So much of that was organized for me after the Harvey flood by Lindsey that I barely had to do anything but add some labels. Next shelf down is all kinds of crafting supplies, newly labeled, which is so helpful for me. I also consolidated supplies from a bunch of little containers into that red, green, and blue “tackle box.” I once used that for painting supplies, and I’ll never forget seeing it float through the backyard during the flood. It got cleaned up and put in the Lean To, and this is the first time in almost six years I’m using it again. The green cubby on the bottom shelf has a lot of the stuff I used for collages (I’m about to be doing more of those) and the elephant print cubby has more fabrics. I finally purged the rest of the fabrics from the Lean To, and now everything for sewing is inside the office/craft room.
The last set of shelves has all kinds of paint supplies on the top shelf: paints, brushes, palettes of many varieties, canvases of several sizes, varnishes and finishes, and a bucket of bottle caps! Next shelf down is household files that I use all the time, and accessibility is so much easier than the file cabinets that were flooded and put on the curb. (We lost a lot of paperwork from the bottom drawers.) Next shelf down is Aunt Gwen’s sewing case, EMPTY containers should they be needed, a bag of the items I use for space clearing and energy work, and a box with stones, rocks, and pebbles I use as needed to replenish Aaron’s Garden or to put in the column candle holders in the writing sanctuary when the candles are gone and I put tea light candles in them. Bottom shelf is all empty containers, should any new supplies need them or to be used elsewhere, as needed, in the Hall.
That’s it!
When everything in the Lean To is back in place, I’ll share photos. Tom forbade photos before the work was done because it looked like a large and sloppy family of hoarding raccoons might be living there.
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.
