Poltergeist Spring Cleaning

Things are starting to move here. Furniture is coming and going and stuff is coming out of closets and other stuff is going to the garage. It's spring cleaning time. Yay!

I think I have a great master plan but I haven't written it out yet. So for the fans of the tedious writings of obsessive-compulsive, clinically depressed persons with memory loss and other disorders, this is for you.

The problem is we need more storage space AND we need to put what space we do have to better use. So the first objective is to create more storage space. The only place where this is possible is the garage. Recently I got rid of a bunch of unnecessary junk and then got busy trying to plan for new shelves.

My first attempt didn't work out so good. I put together the double wide shelves I had at my last apartment and then drove the car in for the night. Well, I couldn't open the car door. So I had to get out the power drill, disassemble most of it, put it back together as a single unit and try again. That was a lot of wasted time. And yes, thank you, I DID measure first. Just drop it.

Tonight I finished adding shelves to the wall. It only took - two trips to IKEA, -three trips to Home Depot and a lot of measuring, calculating, drilling, cussing, sweating and improvising.

So, tomorrow the poltergeist begins. The camping equipment we extracted tonight (from under the stairs behind the coat closet on the main floor) will move into the garage. The Christmas decorations and etcetera will move from the walk-in closet in the little bedroom (#3) upstairs to the "room under the stairs."

Then, I can move my clothes into the walk-in closet of bedroom #3 from my current bedroom (#2). The closet in bedroom #2 will become storage for things currently in #3 that don't go to the garage or under the stairs. Eventually I will make #3 my actual bedroom leaving #2 as a library, office, computer room, exercise room, den - - whatever.

The funny thing is, nothing is going to happen in bedroom #1. Nothing's going in and nothing's coming out. There is a storage closet outside bedroom #1 just off the deck but it's full of Halloween decorations. Since we only use that stuff once a year, they may as well just stay there. And beneath the deck there's another storage room/hot water heater room just off the patio. It's full of potting soil, planters and a charcoal grill that may never get used again. So that's off to the garage as well.

The thing that put this all in motion was the purchase of a new dining room table and chairs, replacing the one Brad brought from his previous apartment. The new one is much larger and will require the original one to be moved into the kitchen which will, in turn, cause the one in the kitchen to go bye bye in some manner. I think the latest method will be to turn a few screws, put the pieces in the garage and deal with it later.

There is an urgency to all this. The new table and chairs arrived last night about two weeks ahead of schedule. We weren't ready. I had just finished moving the old computer desk down from the bedroom #3 closet to the dining room in preparation for transit to Brad's niece in San Lorenzo. So now the main floor, consisting of two basic rooms, the kitchen and the dining room/living room, is totally cluttered. In these two rooms we currently have two sofas, three dining tables, 12 chairs, a computer desk, two display cabinets, two CD cabinets, a huge TV, an armchair, a recliner, two lamps and lamp tables, a coffee table and a few odds and ends. And after watching The Amazing Race we emptied the contents of the room under the stairs so in addition to everything else, we have two tents, a gazebo, three camping chairs, two coolers, two cots, various lanterns, sleeping bags, and other equipment waiting to move to the garage.

And when all this is done I promise the car WILL FIT comfortably into the garage once again. Something tells me that I may be given a "poltergeist" job in the next life.