Stirring Up the Dust

That's what my mother called it when we got into a big cleaning. And believe me, the dust is stirring like the second coming of the Dust Bowl around here.

It starts with something small, usually. "I'm just going to sort out this drawer, or this box, or this closet..." Next thing you know, I've got the whole house torn up. It feels pretty good to clear out stuff we haven't used in several years (if ever) but the resulting mess can be daunting.

This particular binge started with the bathroom. The granddaughters painted it over New Year's weekend, and the color was much brighter than I expected it to be. I can't complain, mind--I bought the paint myself. I was considering how to tame it a bit; first I put up a white shower curtain and then noticed how the white graniteware washpan looked pretty good against that paint, so we rounded up all the granite washpans (who knew I had a half dozen or more of them?) and hung them on the walls.

Still have to repaint that little cabinet...

That led to taking an old graniteware bedpan out of our booth, drilling a hole to hang it, and making a magazine rack which led to buying a granite chamber pot and soap dish.

Then I thought, hey we could hide the hot water heater with these bifold doors I was going to make into a corner shelf and now that's led to figuring out how to hang the mops and brooms behind that screen. Our house has no utility room or broom closet, so it's always a challenge to figure out what to do with the cleaning tools. I still need to paint the screen white.

This was a homemade, pretty ugly cabinet that looks a lot better with paint.
I wanted a place to hang those little hand towels.

I repainted and Larry hung this vintage medicine cabinet too.
Don't you love that little swing-down rack for washcloths?
Still waiting on the granite soap dish to arrive from eBay, and I'm looking for a blue pint jar for the liquid hand soap. I know there's one around here somewhere...

As part of the bathroom project, I needed to move the doctor's scale into the bedroom, which meant moving Larry's wardrobe which meant moving some other stuff which led to me looking inside his wardrobe, and oh my goodness. Next thing I was like a terrier digging after a mole and there was a heap of clothes in the floor and a husband squalling that I was making a mess. He was right! An hour or so later we'd sorted all of his clothes and had a bag full for the thrift store.

That was last week. This week I've moved on to my eBay/storytelling room, sorting totes and puppets and books and files, getting rid of lots of stuff and taking out a big, bad shelf and replacing it with a sturdy industrial one. The thrift store and the library benefit this week as lots of craft supplies, odd glassware bought for resale that just was a bad idea in the first place, books and who-knows-what is getting packed up and shipped out.

It's been a mess. It's been fun. It's made me sleep like a rock at night. Who needs to wait for spring to do spring cleaning anyway? I still have more to do but I'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe after another week I can get back into painting furniture and working on storytelling. Until then, the dust will continue to fly. I hope it doesn't find its way to your house!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.