I'm Back!

Cleaning House, a memoir - is the title, and allegedly, the theme of my blog. I've lost sight of the cleaning house part! No more, at least for today! I am focused and determined to get one room cleaned, purged, organized, in shape, etc. Much like a 12-step program employing the "one day at a time" mantra, I'm going with one room at a time. The room first in line for my new, determined focus is the master bedroom. What an odd name! This many years after the women's lib movement, why do we still call it the master bedroom? How about the "equally shared sleeping quarters" or the "main bedroom" or the "room of snoring and menopausal night sweats" or the "only bedroom in the house with a lock on the door?" I digress.

Let it be known that progress has been made. This weekend I took everything (please note bold letters) out of my closet. I piled all of it in the newly transformed room of daughter #1. (See blog dated 8/4/09) I still have to purge the 25+ years of the accumulated contents, but the closet (drum roll, please) is freshly painted! Once everything came out, I realized the interior of this closet, and probably every other one in my house, hasn't been painted since the house was built. We didn't paint the closet interiors when we moved in and judging by the appearance, once I could actually see the walls of the closet, it probably hasn't seen a fresh coat of paint since (another drum roll) 1953!

It is now painted the brightest white imaginable. My painter, who happens to be the other inhabitant of the "equally shared sleeping quarters," mentioned that my small closet, measuring 3.5 x 5' (in the 1950s large closets were not yet in vogue) took as much paint as daughter #1's large bedroom! The closet required several coats - after 55 years its thirst for paint was insatiable.

As I wait for the paint to dry, my job is to purge the closet "stuff." In addition to clothing and shoes (this might be a good time to confess I have two other closets in my house used for my clothes and shoes), this closet held a multitude of miscellaneous crap. I have already thrown away or designated for the garage sale pile - two Seiko watch boxes, circa 1980, 2 Cannon Sure-shot cameras, and lots and lots of costume jewelry. So, I have made a small start, but I do have my work cut out for me. The upside to this, aside from a gleaming white, empty closet - imagine the fodder for future blogs! Hello - Cleaning House, a memoir - I'm back!