Cleaning Out the Junk Room

After 4 hrs!

If your honest, everyone has one, or one spot that everything ends up there that one day, you promise yourself, you'll straighten it up. This week was this room's turn. Originally designated as an office/crafts room...it hasn't been used as that in a long time.

The picture is after FOUR HOURS of pulling stuff out of the room. At least you can now see the floor. The room also has a huge walk-in closet at the back left of the room jam packed with stuff. We still have a long way to go. Mel had made a shelving unit in her bedroom a few years ago for her yarn stash. She actually built three of them to hold all her yarn and yarn stuff. Here's her video on building and installing her first one.

Between the dogs and the cats (especially Flynn), they pretty much knocked the yarn off the shelves daily. We started storing yarn in tote bags. These tote and paper bags ended up in the office/craft room. Right place, but not the ideal storage solution. We could never find what we were looking for. The shelves Mel built are now dismantled.

So Mel started pulling out all the big, plastic tote containers, boxes, tote and grocery bags of yarn out of the room. I couldn't even walk into the room without the risk of falling. I had cleared the table in the breakfast nook and started sorting the skeins by color. I'll worry about the different types ( bulky, worsted, dk, fine) later when I put them away in the new shelving unit Mel's building. In the meantime, each color was put in plastic totes and paper bags until it will be installed. Not shown are 18 gallon totes filled with green, red/pink, and green yarns. Four in total. One tote is designated for Mel's UFOs (Unfinished or FUBARed Objects). One bag has knitting, crochet, and other needlework gadgets. Another reusable grocery tote bag has scraps of yarn leftover from finished projects. This alone took multiple hours.

We have tried doing all of this systematically. Next was tackling the office stuff. Most of this was in order, but stuffed into file cabinets, cluttering the desk in a dozen piles or more, and in paper boxes. Still, it all had to be gone through and sorted.

Next all the cookbooks formed three piles on the breakfast table. If I didn't see 20 recipes I wanted, the book was placed in a donation bin. I might mention here that I only brought three with me. Those three still are in the keep pile. Mel had moved them into the office on one of her tidying sprees.

Each day we have tackled one area within the space. After that was sewing stuff and miscellaneous stuff. There is much discussion over what to keep and why. 98% of all of this is Mel's stuff. I did this all before my move here. I simplified my possessions to the bare minimum. Mel carried it all (hers and her mother's belongings) with her when she moved here. A three bedroom house with an attic does not equate into a three bedroom double wide trailer. But I understand the sentimental attachments things carry. Most of the keep or donate is up to her. It just needs reorganizing. Marie Kondo's Tidying Up series on Netflixs has worn on her.

We wanted to try either laying wood laminate on the floor or brown paper bagging the floor as the first attempt of ripping out the ratty carpet in this house. I'm searching for cheap wood paneling to replace the falling/sagging ceiling tiles. Once we remove everything out of the room to remove the carpeting, we'll spackle and paint the worn wood paneling on the walls too. It should be a bright, light, well organized space when finished. A joyful experience to be in rather than dump and run. A place to craft, sew, and spin in, or plan and do recordkeeping in.

I'm not under any misguided notions. This project will take months to accomplish with all the goings on with the homestead. But little by little, it'll get done. In the end, we'll have a gorgeous multipurpose room that we won't cringe when we open the  door to enter. Then, the challenge is keeping it that way.

Last winter, I had considered swapping bedrooms with this one, but changed my mind. I like my little room. There is less space for me to fall in. I only go in there to sleep and keep my clothes in anyhow. The bigger the space, the more possessions I feel I need. Also, the bigger the space the more you have to clean. Makes sense and cents to me.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Jo