FROM THE HOME FRONT
Susan Martin: Losing the storage battle
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a bit of a neat freak. I crave order and must say we have a fairly organized home, with labeled bins, nifty drawer dividers, those sorts of things.
Still, there are items around the house that challenge me.
Like tablecloths.
I own about 10 of them, maybe more, including several I borrowed from my mother with no intention of returning.
For a while they hung in an upstairs closet, but there really wasn’t room for the tablecloths plus the luggage, sleeping bags and off-season coats that go in there. I have read that the correct way to hang a tablecloth to avoid creasing is on a hanger fashioned with a thick round bar, but I never got around to buying any of those.
Instead, I use those basic white plastic hangers, which means the tablecloths eventually slide to one side and become a mess.
Folding them really isn’t an option because I don’t have the shelf space. Besides, I would rather not have to deal with the wrinkling. (Read my thoughts on ironing below.)
And the idea of rolling a tablecloth around a cardboard tube – another strategy I have heard –well, that’s not going to happen anytime soon. For now, the tablecloths are hanging in a section of my own walk-in closet.
I’m losing this battle.
The tablecloths are a hassle – but not as much as the table leaves and table pads.
We have a table that opens to the size of a city block, but we entertain that large of a crowd maybe once or twice a year. The rest of the time we store the leaves and pads under a bed, in the basement, in that upstairs closet, wherever we can find some space.
Seasonal stuff in the kitchen offers challenges – the slow-cooker that comes up from the basement in the fall, the outdoor serving pieces I pull out in summer – but not as much as the big heavy vacuum.
I can’t decide whether it’s best to keep the vacuum on the first or the second floor. All I know is that when I need it upstairs, the vacuum is downstairs. And vice versa.
The ironing board also is a pain. Since we don’t have a laundry room and I iron as absolutely little as possible, I want the board away and out of sight.
I don’t want to keep it in the basement near the washer and dryer, however. To me, ironing is bad enough. Ironing in the basement is worse.
I used to keep the ironing board under the bed – but that’s where the table pads are. So now the ironing board is in my closet – near the tablecloths.
My husband’s T-shirts from all those runs and races he enters are taking over our bedroom storage spaces. He owns dozens of them and wears maybe two. Some of the colors are so hideous, you would think he could part with a few. But he does not. The T-shirts now fill our dresser drawers. I have moved most of my folded items to my closet.
Do you sense a pattern here?
Furthermore, I can barely operate the remote controls currently in our family room, let alone find a good place to store them. More than once I have tried to place the black remote on the phone base, mistaking the remote for the cordless phone.
Which raises the question, where IS the cordless phone?
Hanging out with the tablecloths, no doubt.
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