Clutter

A word about its or it's. You may have noticed that I frequently misuse one or the other version of the word. I blame it on Daughter Sneed who unlike me, can actually write. The woman constantly badgers me about my misuse and now even typing the word causes me to sweat and shake uncontrollably. I lose vision in both eyes and have a pounding in my head. If you see it misused it's her fault, or is it its her fault? Damn sweating.

(Image courtesy of National Capital FreeNet www.ncf.ca)

Sometimes the simplest solutions are right in front of your nose.

Casa Sneed is about 2000 square feet in size. It is built on a small lot because it was an in-fill cluster project in the center of our fair city, more or less. An in-fill project is one where vacant land within the existing city is used for new development. Cluster means that the homes are built on smaller than average sized lots. Our cul-de-sac had been slated as an apartment building, but it was never built, so in 1994 or 1995 a home builder got approval to put eighteen homes on the site. Each home is on a lot of about one-eighth of an acre. Fairly tight quarters.

The reason I bring this up is that storage is a problem at Casa Sneed. Add to the shortage of space, the fact that the lovely Mrs. Sneed is something of a packrat, and we have issues with stuff, lots of stuff.

The lovely Mrs. Sneed and I have different thoughts concerning stuff. To my way of thinking stuff is just stuff. You can always get more stuff. The lovely Mrs. Sneed has emotional connections to stuff that I lack. She ties the stuff to fond memories or relationships and likes to keep it around out of respect for those memories. And I hasten to add that there is nothing wrong with it.

My dad moved in with us during his last year, using the guest bedroom. When he died it became a convenient place to pile junk. A few weeks ago the lovely Mrs. Sneed decided that rather than being a guest/storage area, it should become her office and a play area for the Sneedlets. The only fly in the ointment was what to do with the stuff that was piled in the room.

For instance, there was my father's bed. Younger Son Sneed decided that he would take it in his room, so we gave his bed to a neighbor who was trying to set up a guest room in her house.

We had a china cabinet that became excess when we got our new dining room furniture. The old cabinet was purchased with the few dollars left to the lovely Mrs. Sneed when her brother died. We thought about selling the china cabinet, but instead we gave it to a young couple who were trying to furnish their new home.

We had two pieces of high-end exercise equipment that belonged to our late son-in-law. We took them to the Salvation Army rehabilitation program to be used by the folks in that program.

Anyway all this stuff went to good uses that would honor the people that they were being saved in honor of and they are out of our house. As a bonus, once you get past the emotional stuff, you can attack the stuff that you saved in case you ever needed it. We ditched a ton of that kind of thing. The old win-win as I see it.

So this morning the lovely Mrs. Sneed told me that the house seems twice as big with all the stuff out of the guest room and a functional office in its place. Not bad.

Merle.





Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky


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