ACHOO!

Sorry about that.

I've been reorganizing the 'office' aka junk storage room and it's been a couple years since we've really done any serious cleaning out in that room

ACHOO!

So it's dusty and I am allergic to dust.

Yesterday was Imbolc. The first of the spring/renewal festivals, a celebration of the growing light. But it is also midwinter. We are 6 weeks past the Winter Solstice and have 6 more weeks until the Spring Equinox.  I am very fond of Imbolc because it quite literally means light is starting to return to my life. Due to the positioning of my house, I don’t get much direct sunlight in my windows from Yule to Imbolc. The light hits the windows about 3:45 and starts sliding back by 5. Imbolc means the soon the bricks might get enough sun to hold some warmth & the house won’t be so chilly.

It’s also when I get a start on my spring cleaning. Once spring really is showing oustide, I want to be outside cleaning. I need to get the inside stuff done before then.

The junk room is a little room I used for my quilting and as a library back in our childfree days. It's closet was full of built in shelves and it made a handy storage spot. Then we had kids and things started piling up. Thing we needed but not frequently like the double stroller. They got put in the office, piling up in front of the closet. Random pieces of spare furniture were shoved in this room - small occasional tables, a small desk, a set of kiddie table & chairs and lots of sets of plastic drawers that were collapsing under the weight of things shoved in them.

We pushed some of the stuff around a couple years ago when we had a yard sale, but the things that didn't sell went back in the closet or the stacked in the room waiting 'to be given away'.

Some things in that closet haven't seen the light of day in 6 years.

Last Saturday I went through the plastic drawers & filled a huge garbage with stuff & tossed the drawers in a 'dump' pile on the porch. Last Sunday DH moved the furniture out to the storage trailer and we went through the rest of the stuff, including the closet.  I wish I had taken 'before' photos. We now have 4 more bags of trash, a huge pile of things were add to the burn pile and the pile for the dump is easily the size of 2 trash bags.

So now I have this

which is the stuff we are keeping. You can see there are books against the back wall. My goal is to someday actually be able to TOUCH those books.

And we have this

which is the now nearly empty closet. That enclosed area was our gun safe for the first 6 years we lived here. Then it was home to random small kitchen appliances we intended to give to somebody or other. It has a heavy wood panel with a deadbolt as a door. I'm going to keep wrapping paper and gifts I don't want the boys to find in there. The closet itself hadn't been opened in over 2 years before today. The dust is unbelievable!

And apparently I never vacuumed up the sawdust from when DH put the gun safe in 11 years ago because it is all over the carpet in there.

Everyone has been underfoot all last week so I’ve gotten little done. The plan is the next few days will be spent going through all the remaining stuff, plus my fabric and yard stashes and then tackling the bookshelves themselves. I'm sure I'll have a few boxes of stuff to donate to the library.

And a lot of showers. All the dust I am stirring up has made it almost impossible for me to breathe

So if you don't hear from me this week I'm either waist deep in purging my stuff or laid out from Benedryl.