Green organization

Okay, so the last thing I did today was more green than organization, but I think Quincy is happy about it. I've still got a pillow that I bought sometime when I was in college, and hated the thing because it was thick and lumpy. Thick is good, perma-lumpy is baaaaad.

Today while I was creating an avalanche in my closet (and Quincy was climbing... he made it to the top of a chest-high pile and while I was bent over working with the bins, he climbed right over onto my back and scaled up to my shoulder as I slowly stood up) I looked up and saw that pillow and thought that it would probably make a nice bed for the puppy.

If he tears it up, oh well, it's been occupying space pointlessly for what, 16 years or more? But it'll give him a nice cushy place to nap in my office, and I don't have to buy him a bed for every room in the house. He's enjoying it already. :) Settling down for a nice comfy nap right in the middle.

I had already thrown away Terra's bed and all the pillows I'd donated to it, and I had wrapped her in her blanket when Dad buried her for me. Sad as I was to lose her, there wasn't any point in my keeping her old bedding out of sentimentality. I didn't need a reminder that she was gone.

The whole point of going into the closet was to add back some functionality. I have a hanging shoe organizer in there that is barely used, and what unpaired shoes are in there, I don't wear anymore. I wear black and brown shoes to work because I wear black and khaki pants to work. LOL I don't wear anything that would require me to wear painful shoes. True, if I have to go to a wedding, I'm gonna have to shope for shoes and clothes. But that's fine. I don't need all the frou-frou and I sure don't need a shoe collection. I could use that shoe space for something else anyway, I'm sure.

I decided that I should put the huge wire stacking bins that I'd emptied in the craft room back to use in my closet, like I'd done in my last apartment. The ends of the closet then were inaccessible, so I put wire bins in to hold shoes and T-shirts. Hanging all of my T-shirts up on hangers in the closet is silly anyway. I'd planned on folding and stacking the tees and sweats on the existing shelves, but there wasn't enough space and I really need that space for other stuff that is cluttering the bottom of the closet.

So I stacked up 8 large wire bins to the right and I'm putting the shoes at the bottom, sweatshirts in one bin and sweatpants in another, one bin for everyday stained tees that shouldn't leave the house, and another for decent looking tees. And I'm planning to put my sweaters in the two bins on top of that.

I'm kind of tempted to put my shorts, socks, and underwear in some more bins in there and get rid of my old ugly (space hogging and inefficient) chest of drawers. Heck, if nothing else, I could take them to the school and repurpose them in our workroom or even the bathroom. I'll still have a normal closet's width bar to hang stuff on. All I've done is take a little space from the very short side one. But for that idea to work, I'll have to truly clear out the closet so that I can walk into it again. On the plus side, without that pile of old brown behemoth, my tiny bedroom will look bigger and a lot less junky.

I'm one of those people who waits until she has a mountain of laundry, and then does tons of it at one time. But I don't like to put everything into the dryer. In fact, there's very little I like putting into the dryer. (Though my new dryer really is awesome. It has temp sensors and all that which will cut off the heat if it senses that your clothing is already dry. Why keep heating if it's not needed, right? I also love the "medium" heat setting for jeans. They're almost completely dry, but not so bone dry they shrink. Still a tiny bit damp, which means that they will stretch to fit me properly when I put them on in a few minutes. :) (If they're snug, I wind up wetting them down with a spray bottle and wearing them damp-stretch-to-fit anyway)

Anyway, my dryer and my washer are both king-size capacity. Who knows, I might have a family someday to warrant it. Or a young family member who does have prospects for a family of his / her own might inherit them when I die, if they are the wonderful quality that my grandmother's set were for me (died at about age 40, they did. Bravo! Actually, it was just the washer that was messing up, but I didn't want to have a nice new washer and an old harvest gold dryer. LOL I gave the old dryer to my ex-sister-in-law because hers had wires poking thru inside tearing up my nephew's clothing. It also saved me the guilt of throwing away a perfectly good dryer.)

What I'm getting to is that I really want a large capacity clothes drying rack for my backyard so that I can hang up 2 or three loads of laundry to dry outside, at the same time. Turns out I bought the wrong sized PVC fittings last night at Lowe's, so no tinkertoy playing for me on that today. But I did rig up a perfectly serviceable "rod" under my porch roof. I hope it's not too visible from the street - I did try to angle it. I just don't want anybody staring or messing with my clothes. I know the point is to hang them out in the sun, but I'm a little paranoid right now about birds pooping on my clothes, so this minimizes the risk until I can come up with a plan for the drying rack I really want. (Something I can take with me when I sell this house...)

I did manage to use one of the 10 ft pieces I already had out in the yard for my ill-fated sun shelter a few years back on yearbook signing day. Yes, it was hot and we blistered, but I've decided since then that my umbrella and my folding chair are really a much simpler solution. LOL I also used a section that was on the throwaway pile, which used to be for irrigation in a tall pot of mine. And I strung it up with some kind of nylon cording I stole from Dad years ago.

And now I'm looking at that stack of small plastic bins, thinking they need to go out to the curb, where some trash picker will grab them before they actually make it into the trash. LOL

Oh, and I've found another use for allll those Wal-Mart bags I keep getting. I use them as disposable gloves when I'm cleaning up after Quincy. hahaha Hey, they're getting a second use, and I'm not having to buy gloves to clean up his poop.

Results:

1 old pillow - repurposed into a bed for Quincy
8 wire stacking bins - brought unused from the craft room to organize all my foldables in the closet
14 feet PVC pipe - repurposed into a temporary laundry drying rack.
9 small plastic stacking bins - about to become someone else's treasure
14 Wal-Mart bags per week - disposable cleaning gloves.

I realize this is all justification for not throwing stuff away, but it is useful stuff that I'd feel guilty for just tossing in a landfill. This way I'm telling myself that it all gets at least a second use and maybe someone else may throw it away someday.