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The Utility Closet Project
Mar. 1st, 2026 09:32 pmToday, we (mostly Gretchen and the kids, but I helped) set out on the project to clean out the utility closet in the hallway. This was long overdue, because things had reached the point where you couldn't find anything among the junk.
I had suggested to Gretchen last week that the situation would be greatly improved by getting a second shelf unit to go on the opposite end of the closet from the first one. She agreed and ordered one from Amazon that showed up late last week. My big contribution to the problem was assembling the shelf. Happily, this one was of a better design than the last shelf that I purchased for the garage and it went together quite easily -- with a bit of help from our big rubber mallet. I also moved the wall-mounted broom rack to a new location, since the old location was going to be behind the new shelf.
An incredible pile of junk came out of the closet. Some of it went into a trash bag, some into a box to go to Goodwill (we no longer have the vacuum cleaner that uses those bags), and a lot of it went back into the closet, but in a better state of organization. There are now *three* different containers of spackle in the closet, one of which started there, and two of which had lived on the bookshelves in the living room for way too long.
After we finished reassembling the closet, Gretchen joined me in the library and we sorted out the remaining mess from the post-Christmas visit, getting sheets back into the cedar chest and folding up quilts. There is still *plenty* of work to do in the library, but I have done a bit of facilitating work by cleaning up everything around the treadmill, which is *supposed* to depart to a new home tomorrow. It's amazing what got stuffed in that corner, including some Halloween candy of indeterminate age which went into the trash, and then the trash went into the barrel outside before Calvin the Very Hungry Dog could find the chocolate.
Because another trip to the emergency vet would be *just* what we needed...
I had suggested to Gretchen last week that the situation would be greatly improved by getting a second shelf unit to go on the opposite end of the closet from the first one. She agreed and ordered one from Amazon that showed up late last week. My big contribution to the problem was assembling the shelf. Happily, this one was of a better design than the last shelf that I purchased for the garage and it went together quite easily -- with a bit of help from our big rubber mallet. I also moved the wall-mounted broom rack to a new location, since the old location was going to be behind the new shelf.
An incredible pile of junk came out of the closet. Some of it went into a trash bag, some into a box to go to Goodwill (we no longer have the vacuum cleaner that uses those bags), and a lot of it went back into the closet, but in a better state of organization. There are now *three* different containers of spackle in the closet, one of which started there, and two of which had lived on the bookshelves in the living room for way too long.
After we finished reassembling the closet, Gretchen joined me in the library and we sorted out the remaining mess from the post-Christmas visit, getting sheets back into the cedar chest and folding up quilts. There is still *plenty* of work to do in the library, but I have done a bit of facilitating work by cleaning up everything around the treadmill, which is *supposed* to depart to a new home tomorrow. It's amazing what got stuffed in that corner, including some Halloween candy of indeterminate age which went into the trash, and then the trash went into the barrel outside before Calvin the Very Hungry Dog could find the chocolate.
Because another trip to the emergency vet would be *just* what we needed...