In This Space Between: The Attic Room: Decluttered

The attic room, located at the top of the stairs, is so called because through it you access the attic. It's the fifth room upstairs, and just a bit too small for a bedroom, but the perfect size for piles and piles to accumulate in.

Most people have a junk drawer. We've taken junk drawer to a whole new level. We've graduated from a drawer, to a chest of junk drawers, to a junk room. It's our own little slice of hoarding heaven. AKA, storage.

May 2019

This room became to our home what the unfinished plate of leftovers wrapped in cling wrap is to the fridge. It's where things have been shuffled when I don't know what to do with them, or have no better place for them, or don't have time to deal with them. It's where decorations are stored, where I pile the winter gear in its off season, where bags and boxes meant to be donated are piled, and home to the travelling vacuum--that is, when it fits through the door. And when we expect company, things that I clear from downstairs are hurriedly piled in the attic room to get them out of the way, and never dealt with.

Boys being boys, and mountains being exciting and exotic places to play, I've found them climbing over everything, not caring what breakables have been carefully stacked with the outgrown clothing. I found evidence of their rambunctious games of hide and seek, tunnels running behind and under the junk, which must have also served as snack den for the forbidden remnants of whatever they pilfered from the kitchen. The attic room has been a true lesson in humility for me. I could probably use it as an opening line to break the ice in so many situations... Sooo...what do you like to hoard, hmm? My preferred theme is thrift store junk.

August 2020

The starry-eyed new homeowners that we once were envisioned grand things for this room. For a while I dreamed of it as a craft room, book shelves and plants everywhere, but since our whole main level has pretty much evolved into that vision, the idea was abandoned. We now plan to make it our second bathroom in a few years. With that goal in mind, I hope to progressively reduce the amount of stuff that we store so that it will all fit into the smaller walk-in closet (which we call the game closet) by Addie's room. The excitement of the possibility of it's transformation into a bathroom was truly the igniting force behind all the progress I made.

November 2020

As you may be able to tell from the progression of photos and videos, I've tackled the attic room so many times, only to become fatigued by the enormity of the project, and walk away. It would then quickly descend right back into total chaos. A couple weeks ago I was finally able to spend a good 10 hours, with a few breaks, working on the hoard.

February 2021

As promised, I have to share some of the things--both gag-worthy and exciting--I uncovered. I solved the mystery of the missing bag of Christmas ornaments that were supposed to be put in stockings--two years ago. I actually designated a box for "forgotten ungiven gifts" because those weren't the only I discovered! Cards and letters from friends and family dating back 15 years overflowed from a cardboard box, along with outgrown/will-be-grown-into shoes that never made it to the shoe tote, scattered everywhere.

"Run Dad Run!" warns this card. So true, can I run too?

I teared up more than once during the sorting. So many loved ones, so missed.

I spied with my little eye the long-lost bunny spoon, missing for over a year and tucked in a buried frosting Tupperware. Three grocery bags of outgrown boy shoes were taken out of here to donate. Three moldy apple cores winked at me from hidden corners, accompanied by countless candy wrappers.

A box of vintage napkins and flour sack towels embroidered by each of our grandmas was a treasure I discovered and brought downstairs to put in the linen drawer of my buffet. Kitchen hand towels that I did not need I ended up cutting in half and hemming up because we really needed kitchen washcloths.

This broken window will be hard to replace because, if you may notice right above the cracked corner, there is one of two BB holes. They were made the by the grandchildren of Paul and Antonia, who build our house in 1901. They stopped by the year we bought the place to tell us the story of playing with BB guns upstairs at Grandma's.

My coloring box from second grade was a blast from the past, and still hanging onto the broken lid from when Billy W. borrowed my yellow crayon and accidentally shut my desk lid without closing my crayon box. Poor Billy got an earful from me about it. It was hidden under the porcelain dolls from my childhood, which survived the basement flood of 2012 a little worse for the wear.

I found wrapping paper from my 13th birthday, when my greatest aspiration was to become a jockey and win the Triple Crown. (I prayed every night that I wouldn't grow taller than 5'4", and though I never became a jockey, my prayer was answered and I stayed the same five feet and one inch I was at 13 years old.) My first-ever diary was in the same box, started when I was 10. The first entry recounted how my little brother "Jimmy" learned to do a cartwheel. Tucked inside was a little paper hat, fashioned out of my old math scrap paper, folded decades ago by my Grandpa Mahoney to entertain us kids when he and Grandma came over for a visit.

Loads of vintage craft supplies, my neon label maker, and hundreds of beads from the 1990s were forgotten in a box. I found Eli's BDU's from when he was in the Army, and the dress I wore as a three year old to my youngest brother's baptism. Photos I thought were lost forever were placed with others in one of the cedar chests.

There are still things in there I'm not sure what to do with, like the unfinished cross stitch projects from my youth and a tote of worn out jeans. Things I should part with but feel like I would regret doing so. I'm giving those a bit of time.