Monday, February 20, 2012

The Spare Room: Or What It's Like To Be In A Black Hole

So we have this spare room. Since Ninja Girl moved into Dino Boy's room about 2 years ago, it's been my office (which didn't last long), a guest room, and most recently a dumping ground for all the things we don't really use much. I mean dumping ground, too. Like, throw the junk in there and shut the door before you see just how bad it's gotten kind of room. Well, now it needs to be a baby room again, and this has proven no small task.

I've spent the majority of the weekend (Thursday AND Friday included) fighting my way through all the stuff. Seven bags for the local donation center (plus other larger objects) and four garbage bags later, it kind of looks like a room. Well, you can see some of the floor now at least. Still a ways to go before it's CLEAN. It's amazing how much STUFF families accumulate. And we're not even a large family or one with a house. I can't imagine if I even had more space. It keep cleaning, and yet the room never seems to get cleaner! It feels like it'll never be done. There's probably a writing analogy in there, but I'm too tired to pull it out.

Anyway, I'm now in bed trying to rest after a four-hour stint in my black hole room, but I thought I'd share some of the more interesting things I came across in my digging. You know, for kicks. (Hey, it's my blog. Deal.)

• All the brochures, receipts, and tickets from my honeymoon in Monterey.

• Old slides I developed myself in high school.

• One of my sketchbooks, sadly water damaged. Can't remember how that happened.

• My husband's school-assigned journal from 1997—seriously hilarious reading.

• Fushigi Yuugi pictures I printed out from online and LAMINATED. I believe I once had them in my high school locker.

• Pictures from my husband's Seijin No Hi (Coming of Age Day.) He turned 20 while he was living in Japan, so there he is this blond, tall dude among all these beautiful girls in kimono, ha.

• A pack of oil pastels, still good! *score*

• A quilt I really need to finish. Forgot how much I loved the fabric.

• The one and only poem I ever got for Valentine's Day, written by a mystery person and left on my door step when I was in college. Still don't know who did it.

• A fairly large spider carcass. Really, really glad it was dead already.

15 comments:

  1. spider carcass=reason to never go back in that room again. EWWWW.

    We have one of those rooms, too. it's my husband's "office." As long as I don't look in there, I can pretend it's okay.

    but it's not.

    and I don't want to know what I would find dead in there.

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  2. This is why I'm glad to have moved every year we've been married so far. (Weird I know.) When you have to shove everything into a box, it's really easy to prune down.

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  3. *Just the words 'spider' and 'carcass' together have sufficiently creeped me out! If I had seen that early in the cleaning process, it would have taken me 10x longer to gut that room (if at all)!

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  4. You can only hope the spider died because there wasn't any food to keep it alive. It's how I get past it anyway!
    I, too, have a similar room - the fourth bedroom. My desk is in there - it's where I pay the bills - as well as other junk. Good thing I don't need the room for guests any more. My kids moved out, so I have two other spare rooms to use in that capacity.

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  5. I find moving 8 times in 8 years has been the best possible preventative measure... we've had the occasional 'black-hole-closet', but never enough stuff to fill a whole room. Then again, during some moves, we've left behind most of our furniture...

    Good luck on your cleaning-spree!

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  6. The cleaning is not fun, but the baby you put into that room will be!

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  7. Maybe you could write a story about the Valentine's Day poem; I've always liked the idea of secret admirers.
    I just moved to a new apartment a few months ago, and it took me forever to clean everything out and decide what to keep and what to throw out. Like you, I've kept a lot of receipts; I keep thinking I'm going to need them someday. Except I never do.

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  8. We had to do this last summer to move one of the girls into her own room. For a tiny space, it took over a week just to empty it - that was before we started dealing with the stuff!

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  9. Any chance of said husband reading from this journal on Friday the Thirteeners? Dare, dare :D

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  10. We have a place like that in our house - it's called 'my desk'.

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  11. YAAAAAY Fushigi Yuugi! Hehehe. We would have been such good friends, Natalie.

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  12. "Fushigi Yuugi pictures I printed out from online and LAMINATED. I believe I once had them in my high school locker." - This is my favorite! I was addicted to this show in high school, followed with a close second to Ayashi no Ceres. :)

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  13. Lols! What a dare. That would be fun :)

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  14. I take it Fushigi Yuugi is an anime-manga sort of thing?

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  15. Wait a minute - I know I'm new to your blog but does "baby room" mean you're expecting? If so, when? *scurries off to find more posts about this topic*

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