Still More Cleaning Out

Hallelujah, my room is my own again!!  Mostly, anyway.  There's a box of Christmas wrapping paper that needs a new container.  Did you ever try to find a wrapping paper container in the middle of July?  You'd think there would be some plain ones for birthday and anniversary and graduation wrapping paper.  And I'm not being fussy.  There are all types of storage/organizers.  I'll take whatever I find first.

I'll probably have to go to WalMart, where I'll walk about three miles to find storage boxes for wrapping paper. *sigh*  There are also a couple of empty boxes in my room.  And one box of give-away.  And a bag of yarn for one of my pals who still crochets.  But, it's a lot better than before I got my closet done.

The cats helped, of course.  I used good ol' Spic & Span to wash the floor and walls.  Chloe walked in just as I was starting, didn't find anything to sit on, so she left.  I worked my way from back to front.  Bebe sat behind me the entire time.  Once, I accidentally bopped her in the face with my foot when I was scooting backward.  When I was done, and sat back to survey the closet, Be walked in front of me.  Boy, did her nose wrinkle!  I guess cats don't like the smell of Spic & Span.  I like it.  That smell says "clean" to me.  It says "The Tough Job Cleaner" and my closet was one of the toughest!  Of course, the fact that my dad left three boxes of it in the utility cabinet helped me to choose it.

Moving on, I sorted through the scrapbook stuff again, to make sure I had pulled all the photos out of the boxes.  I also repacked the stuff into cardboard boxes.  I had two big Rubbermaid containers and a huge Sterlite container left empty.  The Rubbermaid containers were promptly filled with the photos and photo albums.  I'm saving the huge Sterlite container for when I start working in the shed out back.  I'll tackle the shed once this scorching weather breaks.  As it looks now, probably in January.

In the meantime, I started on the downstairs back bedroom closet.  There are more pictures in there.  Some Christmas decorations, too.  The majority of the stuff is from when my mom used to make dolls.  Well, the doll outfits, actually.  She would crochet these fancy historical dresses for the dolls.  So far, I've pulled out one huge box of doll paraphernalia.  This consisted of, among other things, naked dolls, satin roses, parasols, shoes, ribbons, buttons, stockings, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (that always reminds me of Yul Brynner in the King and I).  And a smallish box of office supplies.  I sorted through the stuff, filling a kitchen garbage can with things like dried up pens, Post-it notes with no sticky left, dried up rubber bands, old file labels from files long gone, dolls socks with no mate (just like us real people) and unraveled satin roses.

Since I was downstairs with this stuff, guess who was helping me?  Got in one!  Of course it was Tabitha.  She stole roses (about a half inch diameter) and paper clips with reckless abandon.  She very nearly upset a container of jingle bells.  Thank God I caught it in time.  Do you know what it's like to step on those suckers?  Yeah, BIG OUCH.  Worse than Lego's, and I've stepped on more than my share of those, too.  I'm still picking up paper clips, though.  And I found a little rose in my shoe today.  I like to think of it as a gift from my Sweetling.  In all likelihood, she was hiding it from the other cats!

So time marches on and I stumble along with it.  The smaller box of office supplies sits on the living room floor because I don't know where to store it just yet.  The huge cardboard box rests, empty, along side its littler cousin, waiting for me to find a lid that matches it.  In the meantime, Tabitha and Khai use the big box to play in.

Hey, when life gives you lemons, you can squeeze them into your cleaning solution!