You know that stuff that was so important when you bought it, then put it away and forgot completely about it? Well, I have mentioned that I collect teddy bear (and friends) stuff. I thought that I did pretty well with keeping track of what I have bought - after all, the teddys have their own room with a dresser for storage (shared with assorted Cabbage Patch Kids clothing),as well as assorted other pieces of furniture in the room. It was to double as guest room so there is a bed and night stand, shelving, closet and small cabinet. Some is storage, some is teddys and friends stuff.
In our studio, which is through an arch from our kitchen, we have 2 dressers from husband’s childhood bedroom. (A third is the one that teddys “use”.) One of them backs to the kitchen table and has our TV on top. It has a drawer (filled with embroidery floss and similar neatly organized in zip bags) and two shelves below the drawer. I presumed it completely filled with craft room “stuff”.
The other day I was looking for some towels that were kept in this cabinet maybe 25 years ago. They were towels that we bought to wipe sweat off of us when we came in from riding our bicycles and were in this cabinet to be convenient to use when we came in the kitchen door from bicycle riding. I thought perhaps they were still in the cabinet after all these years. So I got down on the floor and moved the empty plastic ice cream tubs stacked in front of the doors and the small sewing machine and opened the doors. The towels were not there. But, the space seemed rather empty to me. Hmm, storage space unused - what can go there?
I have an assortment of empty plastic containers (don’t we all) many of which are out on one of my 3 small kitchen countertop areas. These are ones I took out to use from the large plastic boxes at the bottom of the kitchen closet/pantry where the empty ones are stored. Why didn’t they go back into storage - well, I knew I would need them again and did not want to have to deal with getting them out of the bottom of the closet. I decided that this cabinet in our studio would be a great place to store some of them - while returning most of them to where they belong - and to store those large plastic ice cream tubs. (The ice cream tubs are terrific square storage boxes - bread, rolls, etc. fit in them rather well.)
Last Saturday we came home from visiting my mom at the rehab center and had some time before we would leave for dinner and a movie. Husband went upstairs to his computer. I decided to see what I could store in the cabinet. I moved away - again - the ice cream tubs and sewing machine and opened the doors. There was more stuff in the cabinet than I thought there was - it was all shoved to the back. Unused VHS video tapes (yes, we still have VHS recorders and a Beta recorder also), the accessories to the handheld electric mixer - I did check that they were to my current one, not the one that died and we got rid of (and replaced with the new one), our pasta maker (don’t use it, but figured it is a really good dough mixer - I am guessing that when I figure out where to donate stuff again, this might go along with the deep fryer we never use which is stored in another of husband’s dressers in the studio), and some other stuff - of husband’s that needed to be kept.
I found 3 small legged pieces of plastic that have square holes in them, some sort of packaging stuff we held onto I guess, which would make nice benches for my bear village - if I found some small loose soda bottles (the ones I have are permanently in a small tub of ice) they could be used as holders for same also. Those went upstairs to the teddy village stuff.
I also found the cardboard box from when I used to do ceramic painting kits. It had small pods of paint - dried out, the brushes I used to use (clean and usable), and the cloth I used to clean the brushes (kept for now). I also found an ice cream box with purchased acrylic paint bottles in it. The bottles are old and I had put them in this box just over a year ago when I found that I still had some of those ceramic painting kits, but the paints were no longer good (those ones in the pods) and had pulled out paints to paint a kit - which was one of the items in front of the cabinet doors.
I also found a small (maybe 3 inch tall) teddy bear dressed as a carpenter pin that was something to be painted. Hmmm, without the pin back he would great in the village to wander around looking for things to fix. I pulled him out and opened his packaging. There was a list of needed paints and instructions for what to paint which color and in what order. Oh, boy, right up my alley and I need to do something creative and have been, as they say, “blocked”. No embroidery no small bears that I came with an idea to make. This is just what I need and he has been patiently hiding in the cabinet waiting for me to remember him.
We have a lot of acrylic craft paint bottles with assorted colors. I went through them about 5 years ago and tossed the dried up ones, but who knows if the others have dried out since then? Tonight I started looking for the colors I needed per the list. Using a napkin and several cotton swabs I tested the colors I found that seemed to match what I need for him. I found almost all of them, but needed some light colors that I did not have. I did find a bottle of white paint and figure I can add some to darker colors and get the colors I need. I hope to start painting tomorrow.
I took the small cardboard box from my earlier project to get rid of the box and see what was in it. I went through the pods that with the dried paint - all of the pods were dried out. I kept the ones that had the least paint in them and will try cleaning out as the pods can be used for mixing small amounts of color and storing them short times. I tossed some paint bottles that the paint seemed to be dried in. And then I found ----- the carpenter had a friend! There was a Santa pin in the box also to be painted! He will wait for now, of course.
While the cabinet was not as empty as I thought it was, I did manage to get the stack of empty ice cream tubs into it. I rearranged what was in there so that more would fit in - not the sewing machine unfortunately - it is too tall for either shelf. I can get a medium sized basket and store some of those plastic containers in it for more convenient access to them.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
It is amazing what one can find when one starts going through “stuff”. If one goes through items that are sitting around one will find surprises. One will find stuff to toss or donate and make room for what one needs to store and one might find some hidden items that one has forgotten one has that bring a smile to one’s face.
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