Dance After Dark Photography

I’m tired, but I can’t sleep. I dozed for about an hour and a half, but I’m a little wired from something. Maybe I waited too long after taking the hydrocodone cough syrup. If I take NyQuil and go to bed, I’ll fall asleep. If I take too long puttering around, it makes me hyper instead. After kicking my sheets around entirely too long, I gave up. Now I’m waiting for the hardware store to open. I’ve got 3 hours.<InigoMontoya>I hate waiting.</InigoMontoya> After yesterday’s activity and in my weakened state I wasn’t up to much on the home improvement front, but I’ve been bitten by the bug. Thus I hung a few more pictures and a pin-board that was supposed to be part of my desk. I also threw out a lot of junk and a couple of boxes left over from previous home improvement kicks. When you buy something with a lifetime warranty, it’s a good idea to stash the manual and the receipt somewhere. You do not, however, need to keep the box for a few months, shuffling it around as it gets in your way and then ultimately forgetting that it’s under that pile you keep stumbling over. In fact, it’s the reason for the pile. Oh! Well, I’d better get rid of that.So I didn’t really do much, but there’s a lot less on my floor now. I had several stacks of boxes up against the wall, along with shelving that’s been sitting around for a year. One of the shelves was finally mounted the other day. The remaining two will go up today, and I think I’m going to add two more floating shelves to mount my two sword racks. My problem is that I’ve got a lot of stuff in a very small bedroom. I had 2.5 rooms to myself at the old house, when the entire upstairs was my domain. For a guy who likes empty space, I have a bad habit of accumulating crap and filling that space. My solution in this tiny environment (now that I’m in a house rather than a rental) is to mount everything on the walls. As more time passes, I realize that I can expand my definition of “everything.” At first I just wanted some shelves to put up pictures and a few books. Ah, but now there’s much more happening.Steff and I found some great wall-mounted drawers at Ikea. They call them a shoe rack; I call it a godsend. Instead of having a bulky and inadequate dresser fighting for floor space, I’m going to mount 9 slimline drawers directly on the wall. Not only will I triple my clothing storage, but I’ll also be able to move some of the boxes into the closet that up to this point has been overfilled with shirts, jeans, slacks, sweatpants, etc. I’ve got 3 rollaway bins under my bed, and the theory is that everything important will go under there. Dress shirts, dress slacks, etc. Work attire that has to be folded. Not that I iron anyway, but on some things wrinkles look worse.Everything else is going to get rolled into a cylinder and stacked in my new drawers. I’m even thinking about making plastic cylinders to help things hold their shape & stay organized. It wouldn’t take much. Two dowel rods mounted on a swivel, one end open. Tuck part of a shirt in between, roll it to make it cylindrical. Slide on the sleeve I’ll make, slide off the whole thing. I might even mount it on my wall over the drawers themselves. It’d rock if I could make it spring-loaded so I can wind it up a little and then let the device do the “folding” for me. That’ll be a project for another time, but I really like the idea. Heck, I don’t even need to premake the sleeves. I can use wax paper and masking tape. I’d just take the shirt bundle off the device first, use a little pressure to roll it tighter on a flat surface, and then cut & tape to seal it. Even better if it’ll be transparent enough to let me see which shirt is which.This is the real reason I started this post. Brainstorming. I just came up with that. My next big issue, and I do mean big, is my djembe. It’s big & heavy, and it usually sits on the floor. The top is natural skin, so I have to resist the urge to use it as a table. I usually wind up putting papers on it, and then from there it’s a natural progression to light boxes and random effluvia. Not anymore! I’m going to mount it high on the wall, over just about everything else. I’ll finally do what I thought about a long time ago and mount the djembe with my didgeridoo, & native american flute. It might even look pretty when I’m done. Last, but not least, the HUGE wardrobe is going away. It was a great investment when I lived with Berlin in a converted garage with no closet. This room has a tiny closet, so I needed it for a while. Not anymore, and it’s the main reason I feel cramped in here (though putting up those dark blue denim curtains really do make the room feel bigger.) I’ll take a picture before I take it apart. I’ll wind up selling it because I’ll need the money after all these doctor bills and all the time I’ve had to take off work. If I remember correctly, I paid over $80 for it. It’s solid, heavy, and sturdy with a smooth-rolling drawer at the bottom. I’ll probably ask half the original price. All of this is an effort not to give up my beautiful 4-post queen-size bed. It’s part of a bedroom set my mother’s had for a long time, so when she gave it to me she expected to give me the rest of the furniture eventually. That hasn’t been necessary or practical, and I really do like the bed. I just need more room!

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