Attic - part one - Cedar Closet

Welcome to the third floor of our house...we are lucky enough to live in an old Victorian home with (almost) a full third floor which houses my studio, girls playroom, storage spaces and a nice size closet that we lined in cedar and use for out of season storage. Now, none of these spaces are very big...in our house you keep going up, not out...but we're really fortunate that everyone kind of has a spot even if it's small.

There is so much going on on the third floor of my house that I can't physically do the whole thing at once so here goes the Cedar Closet

Something I learned that I'll share with everyone....See, we have this closet that follows the slope of the roof so we thought, great, shelves w/ sweaters etc..in the back, hanging rod in front, line it with cedar, we're good to go. Great, for a while, then the cedar particleboard lost it's cedar smell and moths ate 2 of my favorite sweaters. Discovered this week that unlike cedar tongue&groove plank boards which can be sanded to bring back the cedar smell, the particleboard can't. Once it looses the scent, you can't get it back.

*sigh*

Cost to re-do cedar closet in the t&g plank boards: $245 for materials (closet bigger than we thought!)
Cost to buy cedar sachets, blocks and hanging blocks at Lowe's: $17.50

Guess which we opted for?! So to spare someone else losing their good sweaters, make sure your cedar is smelly!!

Lots of good stuff tossed from just this one place!

1. Clothes...donating to VVA (http://www.clothingdonations.org/accepted.htm)

2. Old linens & receiving blankets from when girls were babies :-( used to keep some blanket for girls to play babydoll with but now that they're almost 8, they are far beyond that....these items getting donated to local animal shelter for them to use for the animals cages.

3. Wedding dress...I loved my dress, I still love my dress...I really felt like a princess in it but a) never going to wear it again b) have tons of pix of me in it c) it has a huge skirt, cathedral train and enourmous petticoat....seriously, almost as big as princess di's was.. so I literally have no room for it. The wedding dress donation site Gail mentioned doesn't take dresses older than 2000 (how would they know?) so will donate somewhere else...maybe some military based charity???

4. 2nd thing I ever embroidered....crewel embroidery...1975....tabby cat sitting on fence post looking at butterfly orange and gold..didn't even know I still had it.

5. Old Dance shoes...this was really hard to toss out my tap shoes....I have so many great memories of those shoes...I took up dance as an adult to get some excercise and made some wonderful friends but a) they don't fit my post twin big feet b) I have the video and photos c) haven't tapped in 12 years and if I did, I'd have to get new shoes anyway. But they were imported, from England (hand carried on the plane from London to NY...my british friends mom brought them over for me)...ACK...out the go to VVA with the clothes, 2 pr ballet shoes, 1 pr character shoes, 1 pr jazz shoes.

6. Mimi's fur jacket...my grandma who was all of 5' tall had a lovely little fur jacket that my mom gave me...I'm 5'6 1/2". I did wear it once or twice but it's really too small. Hang in closet for years, was going to have teddy bear made out of it, then where would I put the bear? thought about making throw pillow...thought again. Was discussing w my Mom who had the great idea to give it to my sister who is a lot smaller and shorter than me and lives in maine where it's cold 10 months out of the year. It is really cute and vintage and she'll look great in it.

7. Multiples hangers, those hangers that you can hang 5 skirts on or 6 pr of pants, they don't work, they take up too much space, out they go along with some other rotten hangers.

Total: 7
Grand Total 19

Re-purposing

1. cloth baby diapers...no I was not insane enough to diaper twins in cloth diapers but I did have a bunch which came in handy for burping and when they were both barfing in the middle of the night...in unison. They make great cleaning rags so am keeping them for cleaning duty....try washing your windows w 1/2 vinegar 1/2 water and drying w cloth diaper, works great.

2. 6 more wool sweaters....go to the project drawer in my studio to be turned into felt. at some point

3. lace mantillas 1 white, 2 black... Dad brought these back for my Mom when he was on a training mission in Portugal in 1963 when I was a baby. They are beautiful, Mom just gave them to me....they'll go in the studio in a fabric drawer, they are gorgeous and I know I'll find somewhere for them to live eventually.

4. Crewel work pillow covers...done by my Great-Aunt before macular degeneration rendered her unable to to embroidery (one of the things she loved to do) Mom's cousin passed to her and she passed to me....sense a pattern here?!...hmmmm was going to toss but I think they have potential in sections for a future project so in the fabric drawer they go.


Now, I know what you're thinking....Sue, you're putting an awful lot of things in those project drawers...but, I am a designer and artist as well as the 5 million other things that I do so we need raw materials to work with and I'm hoping that this whole process will help free me creatively a little and help me to use all of my schooling and talents to start a new venture...not sure what yet.

OMG
All that from one closet!!