I'm on a roll... After I got the back bedroom reorganized for the new bedframe/mattress, I decided I needed to find the living room again. Finding the living room meant getting rid of a half a recycle bin's worth of dead catalogs, stuffing personal papers (items like mortgage receipts, health insurance statements, etc., which I am unlike to need again, but can't throw away) into a box, boxing up a couple years worth of old magazines (until I figure if I have a reason to keep them), and doing the same with unfinished craft projects. A BIG part was getting RID of the coffee table. It's a junk magnet. By removing it, it's rather like my switching to a fanny pack from a purse. I can't carry as much, but I've also found I don't need the stuff. I've been doing a little every day. And yesterday at lunch, I removed another chunk of funky green '60's carpet. Gad, the hardwood underneath was gorgeous! Now I need to get an appropriate crowbar for removing the incredibly-well-nailed tackboard that secured the carpet next to the wall. Eventually, all the carpet will GO. The major obstacle is moving large HEAVY pieces of furniture, that sit on it. It will happen eventually.
I have a start on re-finding the dining room. After that, maybe the kitchen... Especially if I get a new stove. I found some slide-out shelf inserts in a catalog. Those would do a lot to help with retrieving pots and pans from the dungeon in the corner, under the drainboard and drawers, which is incredibly difficult to get into, and is the only real storage for such things.
The most disconcerting thing so far was finding the mouse nest. Yes, in a house with three cats, there was an old mouse nest in the corner of the dining room, next to the mail drop. I had parked a box under the mail drop to catch the stuff that inevitably falls out onto the floor. Well, in that far corner, behind the box, there was a small space, made inaccessible by old junk mail, etc. It was full of shredded junk mail, bits of styrofoam, etc. (I found the styrofoam block with the mousie-chews out of it, too), classic mouse nest. Apparently, Ming had brought in a "training mouse" for Circe that had also gotten away (but was probably eventually re-caught and ended up as one of the dead mice found in the house). For a while, it apparently set up shop in that corner, handy for foraging to the kitchen, etc. A little unsettling, but at least the occupant was long gone.
accomplished