James trudged off to work this morning. I'd gone to bed at three last night after being sick to my stomach earlier in the evening, so I tried to get at least seven hours of sleep. I did some tidying up and then went to Publix for a newspaper and to see what they had for "twofers." I got some baked beans, but the rest seemed to be sugary cereals or juice drinks. I also turned in the plastic bags for recycling.

When I got home I tackled a very long-neglected project: cleaning out the downstairs closet. We have a coat closet near the door to the garage which doesn't do much duty as a coat closet except in the summer, when the coats are stored there; otherwise we have a row of hooks in the foyer. It's under the stairs and fairly small, and was full of old but still useful computer parts and a rough set of shelves we had in the old house in the downstairs bathroom to hold books. This was the closet in which we mounted a set of wire shelves on the back of the door to hold extra staples. The wire rack was full.

Cattycorner from the closet, the opposite wall has the corner trimmed off to make the hallway look roomier. We had an old, rather battered CD/DVD tower against this small wall with various things in it; James' and my dad's old binoculars, garden gloves, an old lock, water bottles—just junk. I cleaned this out, placed the useful things elsewhere, then emptied the closet of everything except for the coats and the things (old bank statements and other papers) on top of the shelf.

I vacuumed inside and whisked a few dust bunnies away, then began to restock. I took the DVD tower and put it against the right wall, right next to the door. Then I took the rough shelves and positioned them next to the tower. I put the box of computer parts right in the back corner, opposite the coats. Then I redistributed most of the things from the wire shelves to the tower, with a few things going on the old shelves, which was mainly used to store two car vacuum cleaners we had gotten for Christmas. The vacuum cleaner tools went against the bottom shelf of this rude unit.

On the left wall I was even able to fit the collapsible dog crate, which has been out in the hallway since we went to Owensboro. And there's still room for the vacuum cleaner!

Now I'm in the middle of a different project. I have dribs and drabs on the ends of self-recorded DVDs that now have no home because I have the episodes or movies on professional sets, so I'm trying to copy them off on new DVDs or, in the case of a couple of them, on the end of some uncompleted DVDs. I had a Christmas-oriented DVD that still had 45 minutes left on it, so I put Rankin-Bass' 'Twas the Night Before Christmas at the end of it. There was a slight bobble when the original DVD stuttered to a stop in the middle of the recording, but luckily there was enough room to start again and get it through to completion.

I'm now trying to dub off a copy of an episode of the revival of Burke's Law. I always had a weak spot in my heart for Gene Barry, and this episode also included Dean Stockwell as a guest star.

Labels: decluttering, housework

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 4:37:00 PM

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