Mission:  Organization

A while back, Swistle wrote some posts detailing cleanup projects around the house. I liked the idea and loved reading her posts, so I thought I'd write my own. I hope it turns out as interesting as hers. It's a cleanup project and a testament to my husband's enduring patience, all in one. With bonus cat pictures!

Our second bedroom is basically a catch-all room, and even though I try to keep it clean in general, in reality what happens is that I clean it, it gets horribly messy over a few months, and then I have to start from scratch and clean it again. During the weeks of Giant Work Project Brainsuckage, anytime the living room needed to be straightened up, I'd toss the stuff into the spare room. It was getting pretty scary. Also, the plants overwinter in there, and I have to be able to get to them to water them.

There had to be a reckoning, eventually, and since I finally had two days off in a row (yesterday and Thursday), I decided to tackle the mess.

"Oh, hai. I is supervisin."


I have too much crap and hate to throw anything away that might be useful. Here's a perfect example of why I have such a recurring problem with clutter.

This is a really nice tool kit that my mom bought me when I was in college:


It's cool, but the case has had a broken latch for years:


Which makes it do this:



Also, we got this for our wedding:


So why do I still have all the tools in the broken case? It just seemed wasteful to throw it away...it was mostly good, and besides, it felt wrong somehow to take all the sockets and wrenches out of their molded plastic spaces. This type of weirdo thinking is part of why we have so much junk in our spare room in the first place.

But I finally went for it:



When I opened the toolbox to transfer everything over, I found these:


My dad gave me this little set when I was in middle school. There used to be a lot more screwdrivers, and I don't think I ever used the little socket screwdriver thing, but I always loved having my own screwdriver set.


When we went to Chicago back in the summer, Nick & J-Dog gave me a really cute kitchen cart, which has been lying in pieces in the spare room ever since. I finally put it together.

"Looks gud, but you shudn't stop yet!"

"You gotta puts all ur stuff on teh shelves. Here, I shows you."

Okay, short of having an eBay store or getting ready to move (nope and nope), why would anyone need this many empty boxes?! I mean seriously, this is getting out of hand. Wait...where's the cat?

"Dis plant tellin lies. Dere was no tastin going on.
I is innocent. Pure as driven snow."

And woot! Finally done: