Opening doors and taking action
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- February 15, 2022
- 709
Being snowbound at home requires we be creative in our activities.
Watching television and reading books are lovely ways to while away the hours, but our house would really like some attention — particularly our closets and cabinets, which have been needing a good sorting and rearranging for quite some time. It's easy to ignore their needs because they have doors that can be closed. Eventually, those doors become difficult to close, and action has to be taken.
Taller Half and I share our bedroom closet. It began as a nice, big closet, but over the past year, it has either shrunk or become too full to function properly. That over-stuffed place was in dire need of sorting.
We began by pulling out a surprising number of boxes filled with all sorts of stuff. One big box was filled to the brim with Christmas wrapping supplies. Another box was full of old photos we had forgotten we had. Then, of course, we had to sit down and go through that pile of pictures, which took the rest of that afternoon. Family pictures are treasures, not junk, so they deserved a new place to live where they could be enjoyed. We decided to gift our children with those pictures, which gets them out of our house — the photos, not the kids. Problem solved.
Next on the sorting list was Taller Half’s train room. It was filled to the brim with train paraphernalia. He loves his trains, but that room could hold only so many of his collections. He said he would sort through his stuff and store the excess in the shed. At my reckoning it will take him at least a year to sort through all his collections, and we will have to get another shed to hold it all.
We have given our house the attention she needed, and now it’s time to watch television and read our books. Next winter, if we are snowbound, we might try the sorting and rearranging activities again.