Clothes, Clutter, and Closet Space

Thank God it’s Friday. If it wasn’t, I think I might cry.

It’s been a long, tough week both at home and work but I think I’m beginning to emerge from my ”house blues” phase. DIY gets frustrating sometimes and when you’ve been at it as long as we have and the projects just keep on coming ceaselessly, it’s not hard to get discouraged. Throw in the challenges of day-to-day life outside the house, and well, it gets even tougher.

Part of it is the ability to see a little bit of light. The mother has been hard at work for more than a week on the family room and laundry room. Mind you, if you were to go down there, you wouldn’t appreciate the difference. It still pretty much resembles a warehouse. But …it looks so much better than it did last week. Things are being moved into more permanent places and the laundry room is sporting a fresh coat of paint.

The effort is two-fold. First, the mother’s been working to make it both functional and livable until we can get down there to do the work we have planned for the family room. (Yeah. More projects.) Second, we need the laundry room. It will give us a place to paint the cabinet doors and other items during the next week or so when rain is a possibility just about every day. And, she’s getting things set up again as a large, relatively unrestricted play area for Toby.

This was previously Tigger’s domain and, until we started storing stuff in the family room, he had full run of it, too. With Tigger, we had to do this because while he adored people, he loathed other animals. (He had attacked Ozzie multiple times, once nearly severing an ear, so we had to do something.) In the future, Toby can stay there when we’re both gone OR when people come so he doesn’t have to hide under the furniture the whole time. (Forced socialization hasn't worked.)

Toby is pretty well-behaved other than the screaming, but he, too, likes to torture poor Ozzie. We don’t leave them alone together for very long. When we do, we’ve come in to find Ozzie huddled in a corner somewhere – a sure sign that Toby has been bullying him. God help him if Oz ever gets his fill. He may eat him! But Ozzie is 12 now and I refuse to have him tortured.

The other great thing has been the clearing out of junk and of clothes we either can’t or don’t wear. I spent several hours last night reclaiming my summer clothes and packing away winter ones. (We don’t have enough closet space to keep everything out year-round.) The good news is that I filled a 13-gallon trash bag with things to give away and finally just threw some things out.

Other things, like old Ts and shorts will get one last hurrah. Once I wear them for whatever job I’m doing, they’ll get trashed. The mother filled a 39-gallon bag AND is finally turning loose of a bunch of old dishes and crap that moves from one side of the basement to the other on a regular basis. YAY!

Hoping this momentum continues.