Seeing what can be accomplished with a week of hard work!

It's amazing what you can get done in a week --- if you put your mind to something, that is. Well, my project for the week (as mentioned in the previous blog entry) was the large walk-in closet that's up in the TV room. This is one of only two real closets in the house, but the other is filled with fabric and the portable AC units --- which kind of makes the walk-in closet the only real one in the house.

This is a closet that holds all of the hang-up clothes and all of our old toys and games. Elizabeth and I loved Playmobil as kids (it's kind of like Lego that comes all put together), and our parents and grandparents indulged that love. We own a ton. After yesterday, I'm almost willing to be that it's a literal ton, too! Ha ha ha!  I decided to let Pop go to the church to finish spackling all by himself. The clock and various wooden furniture will just have to wait for that good polishing that I had intended to give them. I stayed home and worked on the closet until 7:00pm. Thank the Lord, though, because the closet is totally cleaned out, sorted and re-organized --- and I survived.

Several years ago, I had started to sort all of our Playmobil out of the jumbled piles that were in various plastic bins. Mom got three sets of those large "bins" that are actually drawer units for me. I took all of the buildings apart, sorted the pieces and put them into the drawers. I also got two smaller units of the drawers for the small pieces and accessories. Everything is sorted into separate places by type and size (i.e. people, animals, furniture, transportation, hats and clothing accessories, weapons, crates and barrels, farm equipment, toys, kitchen and eating utensils, Civil War soldiers and their accessories, American Indians and their accessories). I had gotten a lot of this done, but after the big car wreck --- well, I couldn't sit on the floor, so that kind of put a grinding halt on that project. My floor sitting is still limited, but I put my mind to finishing that yesterday. After three or four hours in the afternoon of sorting through little plastic pieces --- it's DONE! I'm so happy!



That wasn't the only thing that got a good sorting through and organizing. I also tackled the wall of games and puzzles. That was no small feat, let me tell you! We had quite a few things that everybody was willing to get rid of, so that made room for a lot of things that needed to be put up on the shelves. This also gave me a chance to admire my baby T-Rex (see the next entry), but more on him later. I've included one picture of the closet. Silly thing to take a picture of, but it shows the game wall all stacked up and organized.

Mom and Elizabeth have undertaken to going through our entire library of 12,000 books. One at a time, they are making the decision as to whether we really need each book. Over the years, the books accumulate, but it's easy to end up with books you don't need or want. They're hoping to week somewhere between 3,000 - 5,000 books. Between the books and the closet, Pop actually had to make a trip into to town to drop boxes off at the Friends of the Library booksale and the thrift store! Elizabeth and I were joking that the timbers of the house were probably creaking from all of the stuff that we sent out!

We all were pretty beat last night, and getting ready for church was pretty hard this morning. We survived, though everybody is kind of crashed this afternoon. More later.