OUCH!

Delayed reaction kind of, but OUCH!

One of the things that I want to do this year is get the clutter around the house under control and just get better organized. I know, grumble grumble grumble. I am horrible at this so this will be a worthy challenge for the year. The hardest thing for me is that organization can cost a lot of money. It is one of the biggest hold backs for me, as well. There, another confession.

I did start a little bit last year. Just a little here and there as I found things that just bothered me and I found a solution that would work if only temporarily until we could afford a longer term solution. So I decided that I would use the same approach throughout the year this year and we would conquer the mess.

Since my sister lived with us for 10 months, I have been better about saying “good bye” to the really unneeded things but I am a sentimentalist and unfortunately I have sentimental things. I am also from a long line of pack rats. I will not name names, they know who they are. Others know who they are as well.

My sister and her three children moving in with us in 2010, however, made it so that I had to part with things that were so unnecessary that we could stick with our stance that we would not have a “storage unit.” We managed to do that and fit four extra bodies in the house. It was tight but we managed. I got rid of a lot of stuff. Of course, now I am realizing that I need to maximize the space that we have and really use it for storing the stuff we have left that we do want to keep for posterity. Even if right now they think that they will not care about it in the future.

Some of my problem now is that we had a room open up when my sister moved out. We then immediately repurposed the room for something other than what it was originally being used for before our temporary residents arrived. The problem? I still have all this stuff and no room to put it in. The stuff? All of my craft stuff. The room that went away? The all-purpose piano, computer room that was also my office and craft room.

When my sister and her children moved out after she remarried on July 4, 2011 (congratulations), I thought how nice it would be to have a dedicated music room. The stance was that when my sister moved out we were putting down hardwood floors and repainting in there. There was never any discussion about repurposing the room for anything other than my office or my craft room. The piano would stay. It is a 100+ year old monster upright grand piano. Evidently Ben was on the same page as me. So it will become the dedicated music room in the house.

It makes sense as the children will all play more instruments as they progress. Andrew plays piano and cello. He has shown interest in the organ. He got an ukelele for Christmas upon his request. Kyle plays the piano and viola. Lance will start piano soon enough. So it makes sense.

Right now it is being used as a staging ground for some of the sorting and organizing – sad but true. It is OK, it will all work out in the end.

Of course today, I thought I would be brilliant and start on one spot that bugs me from time to time – the linen closet in the master closet. Partially this is the result of the children. Dare I say that. Come on so many of you know what this is. There is a distinct lack of linen closets in this house. I dared look in the cabinet in the kids’ bathroom upstairs on Monday night and I just shook my head with a half crooked frown and smile combination thing. It was all too familiar what I found in there.

The problem? The children are folding laundry – a chore. The children are sent to put the folded laundry away – part of the chore. This might require them to put the folded towels in the linen closet in the master bath. This does not always mean that the same sweet children that I love and adore with all my being and heart will do it the way that they have been instructed, shown, and sternly yea yelled at to do it again because they couldn’t get it correct yet again will do it correctly the millionth time either. So things are a mess. Things fall off the shelves. Things are a mess.

Since we managed the run out of paper towels in this house. Travesty. Do not ask me how. I am not entirely sure. I had a several month supply and we do not use them for everything. Anyway, we ran out. The upper shelf in the laundry room was mostly empty. It was aching to be filled with something that I did not need to get to and would not need to be used anytime soon and certainly had not been used in a long time. In the linen closet in the master bath on the floor at the back (it is not a walk-in, per say, in case you were wondering, but it is deep) on the floor under the shelves was the target of the stuff that needed to go up there! It was perfect! The shelf needed to be filled and the linen closet needed attention.

The problem? There was going to be a ladder involved. Not a problem you say? It is, if you are afraid of heights like I am. That ladder will grant me nightmares tonight I am sure. One wobble and I am destined to have falling sensations for days all night long. It isn’t the falling so much as the sudden stop at the end that bothers me. This is a shorter step-ladder so not too bad. Alas, even this is not going to slow me down with this dubious task in front of me. It is a brilliant plan I tell you.

What is up there on the shelf to be added to from the stuff on the closet floor? Cans of paint from repainting the upstairs bedrooms, game room, and kitchen. Unlabeled of course. I grab the label maker and make labels for all the cans and label them all as I move them around and they are all nicely stacked up on the shelf. There were a couple that I did not remember what they were for. A couple of yellow paint cans. I couldn’t remember which yellow went where. I can guess, but it can wait until I have the notion and patience to take the cans to the appropriate rooms and see which ones match. The paint cans, the rooms, and the label maker are not going anywhere any time soon.

It cleared up the front floor in the master bath’s linen closet. I know exactly what I am getting rid of in there. Yes! So far, so good!

Of course, as I was going up and down this ladder, I banged my shin pretty good. I did not think that I hit it that hard. It hurt pretty good, but it only stung for a few seconds so I did not think much of it past that. I did not stop and look at it or anything else. I just proceeded to work on my tasks at hand and get things done.

Then I went to sit down and ouch! As my pants leg rubbed across my leg, I felt something wet. The sensation of wetness anyway. So I pulled my pants leg up, figuring I should probably check this out and clean up the abrasion I put on my leg. I figured I had just rubbed it or split it a little and no big deal.

Check this out…

What you probably cannot see in this picture is the goose-egg qualities. Wowzers! Please excuse the winter leg appearance maintenance. All I could say when I saw it was, “OUCH!” Nice and purple and puffy. Yep it left a mark.

That has been the way things have been since my iron deficiency problems were discovered last January after my surgery. Things like this have left their mark since I had my IV iron infusion on June 24, 2011. Even blood draws and IV insertions run the risk of leaving nasty bruises on me for weeks. The good news is that the IV iron infusion has appeared to solved my iron deficiency problems. The bruising problems are an entirely different story.

I guess I should have taken a little more notice to the pain. Sometimes it bites to have a high pain tolerance.