Out of the Closet!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the USA! Happy Thursday to the rest of you, unless you live in Australia or some such place where it is a completely different day for you as I post this, but I’m sure you are used to the recalculating of dates by now!

I’ve spent the morning reaming out a closet in the guest room.

Last night about 9pm we got the call from Jeff that things to his room mate had come to a head and he just had to get out of there and couldn’t take it anymore. I thought it should wait til morning, but no. DH thought that we should just hook up the trailer to the pickup, drive 3 hours down there, load him up, turn right around and drive 3 hours back, get it done, stop worrying about it and get it over with.

And we did. We got home about 3am this morning…and I slept til 8 or so, but it’s a complete zombie day today, so I am so glad that I am NOT cooking!

So back to the closet.

The past 5 months since Jeff has been gone, I’ve been using his room as the trunk show storage unit. And it was working rather well. I had quilts stacked in categories ((refolded differently every time I’d restack them for those of you concerned—)) and covered with sheets to keep the dust away. And the cat off….if she happened to find the door open, which we tried our best to keep shut tight at all times.

With Jeff coming back home --- my quilts were going to have to go somewhere else! And that “BEFORE” the move “somewhere else” meant there was a stack here, a stack there, some over here, some in the other closet, anywhere I could find a space. I was not going back to this! And believe me, when you have to keep your class samples and book quilts at least until you retire ---this many quilts can take up an awful lot of SPACE!

Fast forward to the guest room closet. It’s a walk-in closet and it really has a lot of space in there, but I had WAY too many clothes taking up all that space. All those denim jumpers and school teacher jumpers from my jumper fetish years? Still in there. Just how many denim jumpers does one girl need? It’s not like they are in fashion anymore…it needed to go. I could whittle it down to being manageable and donate everything else. I’ve got HUGE piles of dresses and skirts and jumpers and jackets and sweaters all ready to be donated. Of course, I know this is going to expand to other closets too, because who wants to make more than one trip? :c/

You will never guess what I found in that closet!

My long lost Ipod!! Oh I have mourned the loss of this guy..it holds EVERYTHING --- it’s got 160 gig of memory and they don’t even MAKE these anymore.

As I was clearing out purses and bags putting them in the donation pile, I found it in the bottom of a travel bag I remember using when I went to Idaho for Mother’s Day in May of 2009! It’s been in that closet the whole time. And here I was worried I’d left it on a plane, or it had been stolen out of my car, or….worse…buried in fabric somewhere in a box of scraps in the OTHER closet. ((We are not talking about that closet, I’ll deal with it later!))

I am SO happy to have this thing back!

And I’m still cleaning up the mess from taking everything OUT of the closet, though the quilts are all in their new home in stacks by category, back to being covered by sheets, and I need to remember to close that closet door or Emmy Lou will find many new comfy spots to leave her fur.

While cleaning out the closet, I came across 3 or 4 tubs that held antique tops, block parts, vintage quilts, etc. What am I doing with all this stuff?

I’m thinking of having “Yard Sale Saturday” here on the blog for the next little while. I’ll post a pic of a vintage item I want to sell with the price…the first person to contact me gets it, as is. ((I’ll photograph and disclose everything well)) Just like ebay, this will be a “no return” kind of item. I don’t want it back, and I only want to ship stuff once! The actual shipping cost will be added to the bill. All transactions via paypal.

Sound good? If you don’t like paypal, or can’t work with it, then I’m sorry ---these items might not be for you then!

I also found some of my early, early quilts. Oh boy. Some of these are pretty embarrassing! But I think they might be good to share them with you too. What do you think? If I did a post on first quilts with a linky thing, would you join in and post yours? Not sure when I’m thinking of that, but it would be a fun way to let our first attempts ALSO out of the closet…and you can marvel in how far you’ve come, baby! And you won’t feel alone if you are ashamed that your first border waved like a ruffle, or that your binding was as lumpy as a summer string bean left on the vine way too long ----let me know your thoughts!

And with that, I’m back to cleaning the closet….be looking for the first item or items to be posted on Saturday!

We are headed out to our Thanksgiving dinner, the THREE of us --- in a few hours. On this day, I’m grateful to be THREE instead of TWO --- and wish the FOURTH one, left back in Columbia, SC were here to round out the family.

Pumpkin pie is a food group! Remember that!