11/6/25

That’s how I’m clearing stuff out. It’s gonna take forever. There are advantages to being a packrat, but it definitely has it’s down side. Cleaning and running out of space being the two main issues.

Back in August I decided to tackle this disaster.

It was actually worse than it looks. I could barely get in there and move around.

My first objective was to get all the art stuff out. There were four bookshelves in that back right corner. I took the one against the back wall and put it in the art room, and put all the art books there. I will be taking the non art books upstairs to my library or donating them somewhere. Then I took all the art supplies on the shelves to the art room. The art room is officially a mess again. When Alex is here at Christmas, I’ll give him all he’s willing to take and then go from there deciding what to keep and what to donate.

After that, I took the white bookshelf on the cabinets in the middle of the room and the cabinet under the “Crafts” label, both to the art room. I took out the second desk in the art room and gave it to my grandson. That made room for the cabinet.

Then I gathered all the yarn I’ve received from my sister since I moved to Oregon and put it on the right side of the center cabinets. The lightbulb finally came on in the past year. I need clear or open storage containers for everything. While not true of people, “out of sight, out of mind” is true for everything else in my life. I had forgotten I had at least half that yarn, stashed away in large opaque containers as it was. I was going to get rid of the semi clear plastic drawers behind the pink box under the electric box. Instead I brought in the other one I was going to get rid of, and now they, along with the remaining center cabinet on that side, and the nearest shelves, hold all my yarns and crochet threads.

Since I wrote that, winter came and went (though winter here is rarely anything like the image above).

Now spring is here in full force. My allergies certainly agree with that. Because of what was happening in real life, my major cleaning projects were put on hold. My sister has been staying with off and on since about February, She’s been a big help. Though it’s still far from cleaned up, it is organized enough to get in there and find what I need, and not have to climb over stuff to get to other stuff.

I decided I wanted the traditional desk in my art room rather than the big old computer desk. Everything has been such a huge mess since the end of summer. It ended up taking several days because I did it all by myself. I had already emptied the traditional desk, so it was ready.

First I had to move stuff around so that I could push the computer desk out of the art room. It stayed in the laundry room for several days while I discovered that big desks are no longer popular and none of the usual donation places wanted it. Yesterday I dragged it outside. I’ll be posting it on various free sites, but right now, it’s under a tarp.

Also yesterday, I put gliders under the traditional desk and slid it into where the computer desk used to be. It’s longer and narrower than the other one, so it was a bit tricky getting it around corners in junk filled rooms, but I managed and nothing was broken in the process. Today, I put the ancient computer on it and connected. I had thought to put the computer box on the top, but it was too big. Since I’m planning on taking my other ancient desktop there, too, I decided they needed a platform. I found a squarish piece of MDF, and four bun feet in my mom’s wood stuff and . . . Voilà!

Definitely not the most exciting thing to be happening, but It gives me something to keep me moving forward to get this cleanup finished!