I think I've mentioned that I'm gutting my house. I received a text from a friend in Medford the other day and when she inquired what I was up to - I said "I'm gutting the house."
Medford: "Still?"
HKOTY: "Uh. Yea. All those days when I thought I was "cleaning"... I was really just hiding crap that needed to be put away in an appropriate spot, but that meant actually organizing and making that spot and dusting and vacuuming around more crap. I was in effect, denying myself the real meaning of a CLEAN house."
So a few weeks ago I spent over two days cleaning the office. I had EWU #7 posters, wrapping paper, boxes from various projects, mailings and such behind the brown chairs in the office. Games upon games stored under the table next to them. 5 YEARS of newspaper clippings from #7's games, files in the desk, on the desk, under the desk, in the chest beside the desk... and then IN the desk cell phones of every make and model, color and pictures from all sorts of decades (seriously) in each drawer - even though each drawer should have it's own "category" of "stuff" in it. So it took time and a certain frame of mind to get in and START in the office. But it made my bedroom easier.
Now in our bedroom, we've got a big built in closet system. And most of the open shelves on The Dads side housed books he's never read. Many of them. They also housed baseball scorebooks from when he coached Blue Eyes and Wacks' teams. Yes - we're talking 10+ years old. Many of them. Several old laptops and a gazillion hats. On my side were various bunco prizes from (I'm not kidding) 7 or so years ago, little things that I figured I'd re-gift (c'mon, it happens) and more files that were strategically moved from the office when I ran out of spots to hide them. My diploma, some yearbooks, more pictures and momentos. Books galore on and in my nightstand... And you know how we go through our closets and drawers at least twice a year ladies - to pull out the summer stuff and put away the winter and vice versa? And when we do that we find something we haven't worn for at least 5 years but then justify keeping it by saying: "Well. We might go camping this year and that would be good for that." So we keep it. Didn't happen.
I pulled out 5 BAGS of clothes for Goodwill! And I didn't even touch The Dads stuff (a first). I went through shoes I never wear (thanks to the torn achilles) or wore once. As I sat and looked at some of it though, I was a bit torn because some of it was just in too good of condition and cost a bit of $$ for me to just toss it to Goodwill. The last time I tried or used Ebay was ages ago and it seemed such a hassle and I like selling big things on Craigslist, but other than that - I don't much love Craigslist either and that process. I pulled up my big girl pants and logged onto the Ebay site and found that, over the years, it has gotten to be a simpler process... that or, I have more time that it didn't seem like such a time suck to get something posted. So I went at it. Cleaned up stuff and went on a posting frenzy! And - in less than a week - made $500. Say WHAT?!?!?
Then came Wack's old room. Now dubbed "The Bike Room" or The Dad's "office" (no desk or chair in there.) If you had walked in there the day I started it, you would have seen two bikes, two pairs of bike shoes, two helmets, a box of pictures and crap I moved in there when the remodel started (nearly THREE years ago) and Jeff's big box of stuff that lived on his desk at Family Crap Care.... I mean, Family Home Care. But in the closets were trophys, old pillows, baseball cards (still have them but condensed 6 boxes into 2), Mark Sosa (Zach's big old fluffy stuffed St. Bernard), old Scentsy stuff, The Dads indoor soccer stuff, books books and more books - oh... and more FILES from the office. As it is now - the office still LOOKS like a disaster, but after 4 bags were filled for Goodwill and all of the books from our room, the office and down in Ryan's room were categorized and loaded onto the closet shelves - I can see through what will wait on that floor until I have finished the rest of the house. Why? Because the stuff that I left in there is ALL photos and things that need to be sorted through with diligence and then something, once and for all... done with them. And I have a plan...
Next came Blue Eyes room. When he left for college - strike that, whenever he comes home at the end of the year - he piles in more stuff than he took to school through his bedroom window (because it's just quicker this way) and for an entire summer, there is no way we are walking in his room. I got fed up one year and took everything he left plus more "crap" that didn't need to be in our "theater room" and shoved it all into his very nicely sized closet! I'd been dreading the day I'd have to actually go through that closet... but this gutting had started and I'm not stopping until order is restored in this house. Order that has NEVER been in this house.
I started with his nightstand and desk and what was under the bed. I dusted the desk, tossed beer cans (neato) and stacked more books for the upstairs closet shelves. I found more airsoft gun bb's... 10,000 more. These are in addition to the 14,000 I found in the garage and little desk downstairs when the original gutting (of the garage) started. Seriously? We needed 24 thousand bb's? And then I opened The Closet door. It was FREEZING in there until I got the rest of the air circulating in there. All told, I "found" 4 bags worth for Goodwill, about 8 items for Ebay and a few other treasures. As I went through the first drawer I got rid of straggler (single) socks and one of them, well... was not like the others. Something was hidden in one. "Hmmmm" says MOTY. A can of chew. Empty. Gross. God d*(^^%*&^it. WTF? But I continue on. Until two drawers down from that... I find nearly every pair of American Eagle boxers given to him the last two years. So the thought crosses my mind - "Is he wearing underwear? At all?" Matches, fireworks... and like BIG ASS fireworks... in my house? and four boxes of cigars. <sigh> So I send him a text asking that while GUTTING - I found these things... We had a little dialogue, but this I loved:
His room is almost done - rather, his closet which was the scariest of sights and I was certain to find some beastly spiders - but found none. It turns out, spiders were as afraid of the things I found in his closet as I was. I've got to run a vacuum over it, wash the sheets and prepare for mounds and mounds of dirty clothes and everything else he brings home - to be tossed through the window in less than two weeks. At least this year, after the past three - there will be room to hide some of it (again) in the closet that no one could open the past couple of years. So there's that!
Next up I'll hit the "Christmas Closet", then the furnace room, then the closet next to #7's old room (now Wacks) and then... that last bedroom - which... I don't anticipate to be AWFUL seeing as when #7 went to EWU and Wack moved down there - there was a slight "gutting" at that time.
As the stuff has piled up in the once gutted and clean office - stuff that I've Ebay'd off and needs to be shipped - I began to feel like I'd made zero headway. But as the packages are sent, slowly - the extreme "organization" that I haven't had since, well... probably EVER - is starting to shine through. The two boxes and one bag I took out to the free shredder no longer sit in the middle of the room, packages mailed, the last little bit of office gutting evidence needs to be placed back in "The Bike Room" with the other photos and things that need to be "picture" organized. All 5 years of #7's articles have been cut out of the massive mound of newspapers I had in there and once the photos are sorted through, I will take to the 3 bins of sports shirts that house all of the boys numbers, names, "firsts". First flag football jersey, first Pony baseball shirt, first Hoopfest shirt, first Hoopfest Champion shirt, first Y basketball shirt, and many more and at least start the process that lies behind the reason I kept them all in the first place.
But today. Today the sun is shining. The sun is shining and Black Betty needs a good run through at the car wash. I will tell you this though - I am EARNING my trip to Cabo. I will have no problem laying in a lounge chair, in the sun, on the beach, listening to waves hit the shore, sipping on a bloody caesar and then later a margarita...
It's taken me many moons to get here - but it's really starting to feel - oh. so. good.
Impressive!!!
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