One room transformed, eight more to go

Today I continued getting my bedroom into shape.

When my dad moved into the new house he built for himself and my step mom, he left behind a lot of stuff they didn't need in their new place. I initially (going on 7 years ago now) went through the house and emptied every drawer and closet onto the floor in neat piles. This way I figured I could tell what I had on my hands and start grouping like items together. My mom had put things into the drawers in seemingly random fashion. In one drawer I first came across a layer of old greeting cards, under that my old school report cards and under that a bunch of my mom's personal papers. I dove into this before I became depressed and still had a lot of energy. I had found a new home for or thrown out about half the stuff when my slow slide into severe depression started. Everything in the house has sat in suspended animation ever since. Just this last year I'm starting to make progress and am picking up where I left off.

A couple years after my dad moved out I started moving into my mom and dad's old bedroom since it's bigger and faces the front of the house. I never quite got my clothes moved though, so I've lived split between the two rooms for the better part of 5 years now. I had taken a peek in my parents bedroom closest and have kept the door closed ever since, a pretty scary sight in there. Our house has strange bedroom closets. They are about 10 feet long, but have one standard sized door down towards one end, making 2/3 of the closet pretty worthless. My dad had added high and low rods in their closet at each end so you could put four additional racks of clothes up. Only problem, the front normal height rods in the way so they never touched the clothes on the back rods. When my dad moved out, he and my step mom got rid of some of the clothes, but not all of them. Those remaining clothes haven't moved for 38 years I'd guess, that is until today.

I've spent the last couple days assembling the cubes and putting up shelves. Because of the odd closets, I decided to try putting all my clothes in the cubes, like you see at the store when you go shopping for pants. So far, I've moved about 1/2 my shirts, all my pants, socks and underwear. I'll move the rest once I order some more of the cube divider clips so I can split more of them in two. I couldn't use all the parts for the "cat" shelf in front of the window and realized today the remaining parts would make a nice stand for my laundry baskets, pretty cool. Today I finished getting everything off the floor I had pulled out of the hall closet and my dads old dresser 7 years ago and vacuumed the whole room. Now I could open the closet door again, the last step in reclaiming the bedroom.

I found it as I recalled, all horizontal surfaces covered in a thick coat of dust, covering the floor, baseboards, rods and top of all the remaining clothes, even the light bulb, just like you see in the movies. I went in with the vacuum first to get up the worst of it and then started pulling the clothes out. My mom all my life weighed over 200 pounds, but my aunts always told me she actually quite skinny until she had me. Indeed she was. My mom also a very simple dresser all the time I remember. This clearly not the case before she became a mom. I found some very sharp looking outfits (50's and 60's vintage), sized I'd guess for a 140 pound person. Once I got all the clothes out I separated them from the hangers and put the clothes in garbage bags for when the next textile recycling day comes up. I put the hangers into two piles, plain metal hangers go to the local dry cleaners, all the other odd birds into the trash. I vacuumed the whole closet from the top down, including the walls and the light bulb and removed the rods. Now I have some boxes in one end, my ironing board leaning up in the other and a shelf centered in front of the door for extra bedding type stuff.

The bedroom about 95% complete now, just have a few things that need to go in other rooms, but this will have to wait until those rooms ready to take them. In the mean time they are safely tucked away on the new shelves awaiting their final destinations. I also got the shelf put up in front of the dining rm. window. Looks even nicer than I imagined it would. Of course, I had to move the stuff occupying the floor in that room into the living rm. to make space.

Like I said one room down, eight to go. The other two bedrooms (0% complete), dining rm. (30%), sun room (50%), living rm. (50%), kitchen (70%), basement (40%) and attic (70%, one of the first things I did 7 years ago was take over 150 cardboard boxes from our attic to the recycling center).

The basement my next area of focus, as it will open up space for various items on the other floors that belong down there. A couple years ago I took down one set of the nasty wooden shelves a previous owner had built to make room for metal bulk storage racks. With the help of a friend, I also removed 30 or so grocery bags full of pine branches my dad had kept along with 100 or so newspaper logs and a wall full of larger pine limbs. Last year I bought several light duty bulk storage racks from Menards and set them up. I've also bought a supply of clear plastic tubs. A couple months ago I consolidated all my Christmas, phone, audio, PA/DJ, video and networking stuff in addition to my extension cords into these tubs. Now I'm working on electrical stuff, lubricants and misc. hardware type stuff. I used to do a lot of electrical work on the side for folks. It had gotten spread out into 20 or so cardboard boxes. Looks like it will consolidate into about 3 tubs, plus some cardboard boxes for the bulkier items. Once I complete this I can throw out the unused cardboard boxes that have stacked up, remove the last set of nasty wooden shelves, cut up the two 50 gal drums my dad used for trash years ago and probably buy one more bulk storage rack.