The daughter asked if a friend from Girl Guides could sleepover tonight so of course we agreed. Her bedroom needed some attention so she was told to clear up… or no friend sleeping over! After some grumbling, away she went. She picked up clothes, books and toys etc and vacuumed the floor. While this was going on I made a start on the ‘back room’ to make it usable again.
I removed several bags of abandoned rubbish, discarded boxes from purchases, half eaten packets of shortbread biscuits, coke bottles, cups, old sandals and the like that the visitors had accumulated but hoarded for some reason rather than throw out. The bed was deflated and stored and the floor vacuumed leaving the room looking a lot more acceptable than previously. It was one of those times when I *really* wished I’d taken ‘before and after’ pictures.
Oddly enough,one of the bags contained two dozen ‘soft porn’ magazines… and at an average of $7 apiece means someone spent nearly $200 to look at pictures of scantily clad girls. Makes you wonder why they needed them? Ah well, each to their own.
Still, this is the way the room looks now… after just a little effort.
Of course there are still boxes of our own junk left there to deal with… it *was* a ‘rumpus room’ after all. As you can see from the picture below, there are still boxes of toys, railway track and the like we keep out for the kids to play with… as are the dolls houses that they still enjoy using. And of course there are the shelves of books…. most of which I’m sorry to say will have to go. I can’t recall the last time I physically threw out a book. To me anything containing information is all all bar a ‘sacred text’ and the idea of discarding them fills me with horror but it just has to be done. I no longer use any of them and they are simply taking up space to no good purpose.
Because this room also doubled in the past as the ‘computer room’ (we had 12 machines operating in there at one time!) most of the books deal with computer related topics ranging from the basic ‘How To’ variety to the more esoteric logic manuals that I never quite got the hang of. There are books on programming languages, assembly language… and a host of old magazines, some dating back to the early 1980’s when I first became interested in computing. No porn tho!
The wife has her own collections in there as well, including all her actuarial textbooks, and journals! Also there textbooks and reference books on almost every subject from Chaucer, and for some reason books on the development of the Church of England through to manuals on the Ford Anglia and Dog Training! Why we kept these lord knows… but they can all move to the daughters bookshelves now in case she needs them.
There are other things in there I’d all bar forgotten. For example I’d forgotten the keyboard and drums were in there. The room has been occupied for so long the kids hadn’t been using them. Once the room had been cleaned they wasted no time in getting reacquainted with both! There goes the peace and quiet!! 🙂
So, after a mornings quiet tidying the room is once again fit for use. The kids can either sleep on the bedsitter which we repaired, or erect an ‘indoor’ tent they like to use. Either way it’s been a pleasant day so far. With the windows open to ‘freshen’ the air in there, and with everybody’s rubbish cleaned out and discarded, the house is beginning to feel like its ours again.
Not before time. Pleasant days indeed.
The Eclectic Interweb 