Prop Dusting!

Or Cleared for Landing

By Jody Worsham

All rights reserved for “Raiders of the Last Crap-o-la”

 

It must be in the air or I'm just getting older or because spring was late this year, but I have been de-crapping room by room for the past month.  I started with our walk-in closet which I can now actually walk in.  Some very skinny people now have some barely worn out of style clothes to wear.  Then it spread to each kid's room.  For some reason it is easier to get rid of their “collections” than mine. 

 

I organized and labeled all my craft and sewing items in the upstairs craft room.  I really thought I had painted the floor three years ago, but once it was cleared, I realized I had not.

 

I organized the linen closet.  I see no reason to keep waterbed sheets these days, do you?   I donated them.

 

The hall walk-in storage closet was next.  Once I removed the computer towers, the monitors with the green screen, the box of mystery cords, connectors and floppy discs, three boxes of assorted picture frames, and the curtain rods not used since mini-blinds were invented, there was room for the vacuum (which had been living in the hall for the past year) and the carpet shampooer which I didn't know I had.  We will also be cooler this summer (found three fans) and warmer this winter (found two portable electric heaters.)

 

The guest room was an easy fix once I rehung all the pictures I had taken down two summers ago when I painted the room and made up the bed.  I also tackled the guest closet.  I gave up on Nehru jackets and Madras pants every coming back in style and donated those items to a traveling circus that came through town.

 

While I was at it, I emptied the freezer.  I violated the unwritten law of frozen food:  "If the label has initials, a date that does not end in B.C., a solid covering of ice at least three inches thick, and no power outages of more than two weeks, it is good."  I tossed 80% of the contents.  The raccoons, possums, and other night creatures ate well that evening even if their lips and tongue turned blue and they were shivering from internal frost bite.  

 

 And you know what?  I won't need to buy hot dogs for the 4th of July picnic next year.

 

Yesterday I emptied four desks.  I mean really, how many shoe boxes of map colors do I need?  I also discovered that I will not need to buy school supplies for the next two years and art gum erasers NEVER dry up no matter how many years they have been in the back of the desk drawer; however, sticky notes will dry up in less than a week.  I sharpened all the pencils I found and returned 27 pencils to each desk. I had enough pencils left to supply the entire third grade at my child's school.  I found ball point pens that were still writing even though the companies they were advertising had gone out of business years before and a drawer full of Magic Markers that had all lost their magic.

 

I have saved our bedroom for last, the Mount Everest of scrap paper with semi-formed ideas, the Adriana Trench of necessary but unknown computer stuff, the Atlantis of the lost and forgotten, the Antarctica of solid minutia, the Sahara of forgotten wrappers and cans … Ok that last is mostly the kids hiding their contraband under the bed when I suddenly enter the room.  Four filing drawers later and two Wal-Mart sacks of unknown wires, chargers, and forgotten passwords plus three trashcans of, well trash, I found my I-Pad, my digital camera, and a Valentine I forgot to mail…with a 28 cent stamp.  I was making progress.

 

I would like to think all this purging was leading to a more simplified, organized, and calming home, but I think I was just making more room for me to move through the house with the extra pounds I have gained.  Either way, there’s more room for all of me to get down the hallway and now the freezer has room for Blue Bell Ice Cream. 

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Tip:  When tidying up, carry a laundry basket with you to collect "orphans" (items that don't belong in that particular room).  As you progress from room to room the orphans will find their home and you won't be running your legs off.