The Treasure Room

There’s a room in the house I don’t often talk about. Years ago, I used to call it the “tool room”, but, as it turns out, the tools I own will never be confined to just one room in this house, and so the tool room became a catch-all for pretty much everything that didn’t have anywhere else to go…

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I think it’s cute that some people have a “junk drawer.” Ohhh, you have a drawer? I have an entire bedroom filled with shit I may or may not need, can’t bring myself to get rid of, and likely need a map and a band of pirates to find anything in…

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The thing is, every once in a while I’ll be in the middle of a project and think, “You know what I really need? A [fill in the blank]…” And then I walk into the treasure room, and this thing that I need– I thing I’m sure I didn’t own but decided to look for “just in case”– shows up right in front of my face. It’s like my very own Room of Requirement at this point.

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Anyone with half a brain knows you should mess with the magic of such a place by organizing it, right? So I didn’t. For four years. But, as you may be able to tell from the pictures of that room, I recently ran out of floor space.

Like, this room went from a charming collection of tools and spare-parts to like, dangerously close to hoarder territory.

Also, if I haven’t mentioned this in every single post for the last month, I have a kitchen renovation coming up, and all the shit from my current kitchen needs to go somewhere else. Like, perhaps, in this spare room that serves no purpose other than to store stuff. Maybe?

So that was the project for this weekend. Get the treasure room cleaned up, organized, and start packing up the kitchen.

This was after Day 1:

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Technically better? I mean, there’s more floor space, at least. But then I decided what I really needed was more (larger) shelving, and in order to put that in place, well…

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Let’s just say things got worse before they got better.

I also decided to try to put a couple of temporary shelves on this wall…

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I have no idea what is up with that wall, but there’s some kind of drywall-over-plaster-over-masonry situation going on (the living room fireplace is directly on the other side of it) and it took 7 holes and getting out the damn hammer-drill and some tapcons to get a single shelf in place. #because2016

The good news is that right about this time my mom showed up with pizza and wine because my mom is awesome…

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She took charge of the shopvac and packing up the kitchen while I continued to organize the treasure room. Turns out I have an entire large rack’s worth of equipment only relating to bees and chickens…

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Yeah. That’s where I’m at in life. BUT I CAN OPEN THE DOOR TO SAID RACK FROM THE LIVING ROOM, so that’s something huge. I don’t even know the last time I was able to do that. (This room has two doors, one from the living room, one from the downstairs bath.)

I also found some fun little things I forgot I had, like this phonograph, for example…

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At some point I’ll find the time to put it back in working order.

I also found this can of paint, which actually doesn’t look very special…

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But I’m pretty sure this is the can of paint my mom and I used when we broke into the Liberty House (before I officially owned it) and painted over all the water spots on the walls and ceilings so the appraiser wouldn’t know the roof leaked (which would have made it impossible for me to get a loan in the 30 day timeframe I’d been given to close on the house from the auction.) On our way out this quart of paint started leaking in a bag and we ended up getting paint all over the mudroom tile, driveway, back of my car, and then somehow my coat and the whole drivers seat.

When reminiscing about this my mom looked at me and was like, “well, we really aren’t good bandits.” (Truth.)

I distinctly remember wrapping the foil around the can because that was all we had at the time. Also, pretty sure we weren’t even drinking… weird.

Anyway, by the end of two days there was some remarkable progress in this room…

Before:

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After:
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It’s so amazing to have this room cleaned up for the first time in four years, I can’t even tell you…

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I now have a designated spot for plumbing, electrical, door hardware, paint, and all the gear related to the bees and chickens (honestly, I didn’t even know I owned three different heat lamps.)

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It’s not pretty, by any means, but it’s way more functional and it allowed me to move some critical stuff out of the kitchen. As far as that goes, preparations continue and I’ll probably start legitimate demo in a couple of weeks.

Until then, more packing, and probably filling this room right back up with boxes from the kitchen. It never ends…

14 Responses

  1. “…my very own Room of Requirement.” Awesome! That is close to my magical super power which is being able to tell you where any item I own is located. And that’s coming from a girl that can’t get either of her autos in the garage because the garage is full of my tools and other various projects in progress.
    Glad for your progress! I always feel like a weight is lifted when I get these organizational projects done.

  2. I wish I had a whole room that I could dedicate to treasures. Mine are sprwaled all over the house because it is too small to hold it all. I just hope you can still find what you need. Every time I “organize”, I can’t find shit afterwards:)

  3. Wanted to let you know that I’m enjoying reading your posts to my wife, and listening to her laugh over your adventures, most of which are similar to our past. Thank you for the entertainment. Most appreciated.

  4. There’s something incredibly homey about an unfinished wood floor with paint splots all over it. Maybe it just reminds me of home renovations of the past and all the excitement and anticipation? Anyway, that’s another good thing about uncovering floor space in there!

  5. I love that you post this stuff, it always inspires me to tackle my own ‘treasures’.

    I don’t have one treasure room, but a treasure pile, mound, corner, stack in every room, sometimes, ok usually, more than one. *A* junk drawer?!?! At *least* one….. in every room.

    It kind of expands your chest, doesn’t it? Heart and lung flow increases…shoulders lift, head clears. Moving a few things, throw them out-put them ‘away’, creates one little space and it can snowball until there’s more than one tiny aisle to weave thru.

    Then of course the mess(es) will accumulate again and in a few years, you start all over again 😀

  6. I like your idea of building some shelves for storage as your cleaning your requirement room. A designated place for certain things is quite underated ~ that is, if I want to find them again easily. When is enough of enough stuff enough. I have an unfinished basement that had shelves along a 10′ wall and an 8′ parallel wall when I moved here but needed more so I put shelves up on the entire wall connecting the two walls. You have much “stuff” you use and need seasonally to run your farm. I, on the other hand should prolly do 30 days at the Betty Ford hoarders anonymous clinic. I save not every broken item but some I look at and think that would work great for making something I know I’m going to need in the future. Then end up buying something that’ll work because it’s more convenient. I have books that have been boxed up for three years as well as boxes marked kitchen, unopened, the contents I evidently haven’t needed in three years. My five year rule has been trimmed to one year, I’ve gotten rid of many treasures and can now see most of the floor in my combo shop/tool room/garage.One doesn’t realize what you have until you go to move or add a kitchenette/pantry to a requirement / storage room. When I do move or reorganize my treasure inventory I always have a sharpie in hand marking boxes as well as keep like or job related stuff together but I evidently forgot to date many of them-ha!, my ocd-uadhd-ptsd can make frustrating at times, finding something I know I have two of….but I’m downsizing some, have a bit more time to organize and de-junk some and getting better.
    Looking forward to hearing of your kitchen adventures/remodel/upgrade constant growth
    🙂

  7. Sometimes when I see a wineglass in the last photo, I go back and check the other ones because for some reason I keep thinking that one of these days, you’ll secretly hide a full wine glass in every photo just to see if readers notice. Not sure why, but this is at least the 10th post I’ve gone back “just to check”

  8. I like that your Mom showed up with not one but *two* bottles of wine. That’s love.

    BZ on the Harry Potter reference as well.

  9. I am so impressed that you can clear a room’s floor AND make everything easier to locate. My default technique of throwing everything into plastic bins results in the opposite of a Room of Requirement, more like Bins of WTF? They look tidy, but it is not functional!
    Your results are awesome.

  10. I live in a two bedroom apartment, and one of those two rooms looks about like your before. Thanks for reminding me that I really need to tackle that. If I can manage to get it to a state similar to your after, I will be a very happy camper!

  11. I love your blog! I always end up thinking about my mom when you talk about yours, our moms must be similar. She’s kind of a badass and would totally break into a house for me. Love it!

  12. You can pretty much see the whole floor! I’d call that progress, haha.

    Oh and that pizza though… is that delicious mushroom pizza I see? You’re killin’ me over here…

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