Monday, March 26, 2012

Rewards from not knitting: surprise edition

This is a boring post about cleaning, with a knitting-related surprise ending which may be too small to appeal to you.  Just so you're warned about the cleaning part so you can go read something else with your coffee, instead.

Mary's Story of Sadness and then Happiness

After yesterday's post of Sad, I floundered around a while about what to do to cheer up.  Eating the hot cross bun proved that coddling wasn't going to cut it so I decided to tackle the horriblest cleany-uppy job I could think of.  And in this house, that means...

* * cue suspenseful music * *

the warm room.

The Warm Room: a misnomer

The warm room is so-called because the furnace is in it, and all the pipes that feed the rest of the house radiate out from it.  It's pretty large, and technically 'finished,' though the floor is kinda ugly and definitely sloped toward an exposed drain.  Previous occupants used it as a living room (!)  I use it for hanging clothes up to dry, housing my workbench and tools, and storing everything that gets scooped up from the rest of the house during an emergency tidy.

You can just imagine what it gets to looking like.

Let alone how difficult it can be to move around in it.

Essentially it's a room you don't want to pass up when you're full of angst and nervous energy, because you can get more resolved in a fraction of the time it would take when you're all mellow and happy.  Sure enough, in about three hours, I had almost all the floor exposed again and a tremendous amount of stuff out to Goodwill, recycling, or the garbage.

(and yes, I did just do about 5 days of this job over Christmas.  I swear that room breeds mess... though in this case it turned out to be mostly empty cardboard boxes I was keeping for some reason.)

The Reward

Okay, here is the exciting part.  One of the biggest nagging issues in this room is the garbage bag o' wrapping paper.  Don't ask me why I keep my wrapping paper in a garbage bag - or rather kept, because yesterday I finally came to my senses and found an empty cardboard box that was tall, narrow, and  - empty.  whoo hooo!

I switched the big rolls and poster tubes over to the box, now neatly wedged into a corner where it can't fall over or drift generally, and then picked up the 8-year-old, torn garbage bag to collect scraps of paper for recycling, with a view to tossing the bag immediately afterward.

But I felt something when I was grabbing the paper, and I had to look closer.


Ta da!!!!

It's the Missing Sock! The one I lost over the Christmas break!  It must have fallen into the wrapping paper bag when I switched the light off upon leaving the room with an armful of clean, handknit socks.  Catch me being responsible about electricity use again... well, yes, but I've moved the wrapping paper storage now so that risk is gone.

The Conclusion

After discovering the sock I still had a mountain of empty boxes in the TV room (aka my office) so I sat and got a dozen paper cuts slicing them all up and putting them in recycling.  Then I got rid of all the other excesses and vacuumed and tidied away yarn and made the cushions pretty on the sofa and now I have a nice shiny knitting space la la la

The End.

ps it's totally cold enough to wear the socks today, but should I wash the one that was lost in the depths of a dusty bag?  I think yes, though perhaps without letting it out of my sight until it's safely back in its sock cubby.  I did knit backup socks after all.

pps after all the cleaning up and dressing of papercuts I worked on the alpaca socks that have been in my Bad Books for not working out the first time.  I seem to be rotating Bad Books projects right now instead of Exciting ones.

ppps happy Monday!

6 comments:

TammyTaylor said...

I just tackled our front room on Saturday! YIKES does that room get out of control. I do believe it has a mind of its own :)

yay for finding your sock!!! I'm excited for you. AFter reading your post, I'm excited about tidying this morning and maybe some knitting tonight?!

justmeandtwo said...

The MISSING SOCK! So very exciting! Love that feeling, and on a Monday! Woo Hoo!

Mary Keenan said...

heh heh

I don't know what feels nicer right now: knowing the sock is safely with its mate again, or the sight of my stunningly inviting sofa for knitting, or knowing I won't have to clean that room out again for a few more months ;^)

Trish said...

I've been wondering about that sock. Didn't want to ask about it in case there wasn't good news. Yay!
(and that's a really big YAY as I now have a much better appreciation of the time a single sock can take...)

Elleberry2000 said...

So happy to hear about the sock!!! It gives me motivation to do some cleaning and sorting - hoping I will find lost treasure as well : -)

Love your blog - thanks for putting it out there!

Mary Keenan said...

and thank you for the kind words, Elleberry!