Rat's Nest

As you may know (if you follow this blog) that I have not been posting much lately.

Mainly because of the whole book thing.  If I'm not working on it, I'm thinking about working on it, and currently I'm halfway done with the draft.

Yay!

The other thing I've been doing is helping my mother-in-law clean out her house to get it ready to go for sale.  We've done the basement, the attic, and the garage.  We've shredded and burned piles of paper, taken 50 year-old bottles of chemicals to hazard waste recycling, bags donated to Goodwill, and things left out in the alley for the metal recycler dudes (goodbye 30 year old exercise bike that NO ONE ever exercised on).

But we still have the office to tackle.  There's a lot of paper in there.

But really, as a Virgo, there is nothing more exciting to me than filing papers and organizing closets (NO WIRE HANGERS EVER!!!!!)

And that has turned me into a spazz in my own house.

We have a problem in one room of our house.  It's the office/playroom.

The problem isn't the office.

It's the playroom.

Sena's the problem.

Actually, all her crap is the problem.

Every so often I would try to clean it up, move things around, but basically it just consisted of me shoving crap from one side of the room to another.  Not very productive.  And it always look like a bomb went off.  An exciting colorful bomb of dinosaurs, troll dolls, stickers, glitter, and Legos.

So then I decided I needed help.  And I knew who could help me.

IKEA.

What I wanted was the old Expedit bookcase that had nine cubbies (they don't make it anymore). What the did have was something called Kallex or something.  It's probably Swedish for "You only need an Allen wrench."

I was debating between the shiny turquoise 6 cubby when I saw an old Expedit model with weird shelving options.  I liked that it was slightly taller and had more places to put stuff.

So I shoved it on my wheelie and Sena rode on top of it through the checkout.  Wheee!

I got it home and put together (only wood dowels and Allen wrenches required) in less than an hour.  And I only swore once!

That is progress.

So here is how the room looks now.

We'll see how long it stays this way...

I can actually see the rug!

Now the room doesn't look like a total rat's nest, but I still think the child has too many toys.

And speaking of progress, here's a before and after of my new rain barrel project.

BEFORE

AFTER