Weather reports said it was supposed to rain this weekend, and by Friday afternoon, it sure did *look* like that was going to be the case – slightly overcast, gray, cold and windy outside, and that ‘impending rain’ smell in the air. But when I woke up on Saturday morning, there wasn’t a hint of rain cloud in the sky – just clear blue, and big white fluffy clouds. It was the perfect sort of day to tackle some overdue projects outside.

When we moved last July we went from a house with a two car (plus space) garage to a house with no garage to speak of. There is the carriage house in the back, of course, but there doesn’t appear to be any functional lighting in there, and to be honest, dragging a ladder in there and peering around in dark and (likely) spider-infested corners to figure out what needs plugging in and what simply needs a new bulb has been pretty low on the priority list. So the carriage house has sat mostly empty this entire time, save for our bikes, and most of the stuff that had been living in the garage at the old place was stuffed haphazardly underneath the back deck, to be dealt with at some later date. Recent wind storms have since turned the gathering of stuff into an even more unwieldy mess, knocking over some of the shelves and blowing lighter items across the lawn. And while we don’t go into the backyard all that often, it has bothered me to look at that mess every time  peer around the corner of the house and it comes into view.

This weekend we finally tackled the mess. We dragged all the metal shelving units into the carriage house and lined them up in the back part, where there is less likely to be rain incursion in winter. We corralled all the extra boxes of wood laminate and trim from our floor-laying excitement last summer, and piled it all neatly on one stack. We filled up one shelf with all our camping equipment, and another shelf with random things like the last remaining case of little white holiday lights (I will never live down ordering that many, I realize this) and the old Christmas tree stand, and assorted odds and ends, and in the process, we managed to fill the trash bin completely with stuff we just needed to finally get rid of. All that’s left now is one shelf unit that I intend to use for gardening supplies, and a little more clearing that will have to wait until next weekend when the garbage bin is empty once again. Now that all that stuff is gone, the area under the back deck looks huge. So nice to have all that space available once again.

I also decided that this weekend was the perfect time to tackle some of the remaining boxes that have been sitting in piles here and there all over the house. So Saturday we also purged the upstairs guest room. I put all the boxes of CDs on the top shelves of the narrow little yarn closet, and we filled a trash bag to overflowing with the contents of several other boxes. While there is still one box left in that room to deal with, suddenly it looks far more spacious in there. The cats are certainly happier, since all those boxes were piled in front of the window, and now they have much better access to the sunbeams that come into that room in the early afternoon.