The Cleanup Update

This carload went to the Second Chance Shop yesterday. I know it's kind of hard to see because I covered over the tops of everything with old tablecloths. It was all crystal and glassware and I draped the fabric over it to keep it from clanking around and breaking. I'm happy to say that everything made it there in one piece.

I made it to the post office to send off two boxes with Hull pieces to a dear friend who wanted some before the auction house, a gift to a friend overseas, and another small box to my half-brother in New Mexico. Whew!

Then, a run back home to put the vacuum in the car - that's how much stuff there was, I couldn't fit the Oreck in there in the front seat! Then a trip to Marc Alan (and OMG what's with the girl with her mouth REALLY wide open on their page?!) for a spruce up of my now signature bed-head haircut.


Then home for a quick lunch and then to Second Chance II, where they have more collectibles and such to drop everything off. My mom's old golf clubs, all that stuff that you saw on the dining room table . . . gone - the before/afters are from different sides of the dining room (sorry :-)) and if you click on the photo it will biggify. A stop at the vacuum store to drop off the Oreck, and then I spent the rest of my afternoon visiting my sick Aunt. That sounds fake, doesn't it? But it is, indeed, what I was doing and I was there until about 7:15.

I didn't have to do much in the living room, although there is too much on the mantle at the moment. I did make a decision, however, about the antique quilt I was going to put in the Moroccan corner. It's not going there. There is just too much light that comes in through the shutters on that Southern exposure. I do have a large iron wall mount votive holder from Pottery Barn that will do very nicely there I think.

All that's really left in the upstairs of the house in The Great Cleanup of 2010 is the kitchen and the guest room (still staging a lot of yarn, I'm afraid). And then if I want to do more in the sunroom, but it hasn't been a serious concern because it's been in pretty good shape all along - still, I have culled the CDs and DVDs from in there, and also gone through the drawers there and found a million old cassette tapes. The real ones went to the shop, and the rest went in the trash. No need for them any more - everything's on CD.

In September it's going to be time to hit the basement.

Oh yeah . . .

but in the meantime I'll be continuing to shred paper (I managed to toss all the Christmas cards back to 2008 yesterday morning). I'm hopeful to get the desk in the kitchen figured out. As you can see, it's pretty horrifying.


And, of course, the bar, which is a constant catchall here. . . (sorry about the open trash bin!)

Thankfully it's mostly paper and "stuff." Of course, that's what most of this has been from the beginning :-) I think it will just be a matter of sitting down and seeing what can go, and for the stuff that stays, where it can be put away.

And so, onward . . . :-)