(smile).  Great read, Pat.  Closet sounds neat, but what an effort to get it! 

Robin

  Pat Hawkins <jhawkins1320@charter.net> wrote:

cleaning bug that seems to hit this time of year,

Yep , persackly what happened to me. I haven't been on line in close
to 2 wks.
After complaining about my tiny 43 in. closet since we moved here 7
yrs. ago, hubby finally decided to act. and when he decides to do
something , the whole world must be placed on hold while his wishes are
carried out,... but this time all I thought was 'bout time!
In the master bedroom, we had side by side closets which only measured
43 inches. each & the room on the other side had 2 closets the same
size, backing ours. We torn up all 4 & made them into one 8 ft. by 4 &
1/2 ft walkin closet. what a difference! I'm so thrilled with it that
sometimes I just stand inside it & stare. It took us forever it seems,
to complete, especially when we got to the last final trimming
parts. We really wanted to finish the insides of the closet because
our clothes were downstaires in the basement as that was the only place
with a large enough area to place them all temporarily. Now we must
carefully place the joint compound around the wallboards that fill the
space where the 3 doors used to be on the bedroom side( of course we
kept one door in place ) so it looks like one smooth wall instead of
being able to see the outline of the old door areas,. Now that is taking
forever, you put on the 'mud' , it dries 24 hrs, you sand it off, you do
it again & build it up or sand it down till all is even , what a pain! &
the unbelievable mess from all the white dust it creates, it's so fine,
it gets into everything. But don't try to wipe it off furniture with a
wet cloth, like I did...you end up with what looks like 'pickled'
furniture. No, you have to vacuum it up & wipe several times with a
cloth dampened in vinegar water...al least that's the way we're doing
it. But the house seems to get all dusty again really quickly.
Now the room on the opposite side happens to be my doll room ( which
the previous owner had taken 2 small bedrooms & made them into one large
one...so it 's a long narrow room) I thought eventually we could make a
'walk in' closet at the back of it now that the tiny closets are gone.
But until then, which I can tell you won't be any time soon, I have no
place to store the doll stuff, so we're putting in a large cabinet ,
which is about the size of one of the small closets...so that'll help
some
And the biggest help will be that I'm going to actually get rid of some
stuff. You don't know how unbelievable this is for me as I keep
everything forever, the original packrat! As I go thru this stuff &
throw out empty & dried up tubes & bottles of paint left from my crafty
days...and bits of material, not large enough for anything...and out of
date stuff...and papers & old bits of info & magazines and just in
general really crummy looking stuff...I say, where was my mind? You'd
think I was born in the Depression era. Waste not, want not ...can be
carried to extremes. Well little actually gets thrown away, lots is
given away to whoever I can con into taking it or to charity...some of
it is still quite good, I just won't be using it any more. And a friend
may sell some of it on Ebay for me, for a small percentage of the
profits

So what are YOU all doing in your spring cleaning frenzies? Pat H.
In Al.