Tidy Up Yourself.

Todd and I named our first-born Marley.  And last weekend, we watched the new Bob Marley documentary, because we're fans, and yes, Bob Marley was the inspiration for her name.  And here's something else about my husband and me: we often create off-the-cuff song parodies using couple- and family-jargon.  One of our best, most-recent, was Todd's "Hat Lamb!" sung to the old-school Batman theme.  (Once you figure out how it goes, you might not be able to get it out of your head, either.)

A steady classic in our home is "Tidy Up Yourself," sung to Marley's (obviously) "Lively Up Yourself."  And at the end of the summer and the start of the school year, Todd tidied up, meaning that he took care of our home and got things done.  I helped a little bit, too.  

1.  First, several years after he started, Todd finally finished construction on his handcrafted, beautiful entertainment center by installing cabinet doors on the bottom half.  I was swooning at the tidiness of it.  Because the shelves behind those doors were crammed with piles of puzzles, games, and DVDs.  I mean, I kept the piles neat, but they were still piles, and I'd much rather look at clean white doors that hide all the stuff.

 2.  Next: in mere hours, Todd put together a grown-up, wooden headboard for our bed, using directions I found online.  (So, in a way, my slack-jawed Pinterest-browsing sessions are almost worthwhile.)  The color choice took a while longer.  First we were thinking of stain, then tinted stain, and then we were stymied by dozens of blue and gray paint chips.  Eventually, we pulled it together and made a decision.

3.  Lastly, inspired by the doors in our living room, I found more ways to hide our stuff in cabinets and chests.  First, we painted an old chest that had been waiting in the basement for a space and a purpose since we moved over five years ago.  I filled it with photo albums, and that helped me to empty out the delightful antiqued cabinet that had been upstairs in the office.  Aside from photo albums, it was storing random things that we didn't really need ready access to, things better off in a basement box.

I planned to put the cabinet (made by my pal Liz's husband) where a cluttered bookcase (made years ago by Todd) had been holding space for a hutch.  And Marley and I cleared out the bookcase together, preparing to lose at least three shelves of storage.  I chose which cookbooks and family organization things I needed most, and she chose the art supplies and activity books she and Rudy would most want nearby.  Everything else went downstairs, and if Todd ever finds the time to build a bigger hutch for this space, they may come back.  Until then, I've found a wide-open shelf for my modest cloche collection, and the entire family benefits from the wall space where we put an enlarged copy of Rudy's self-potrait.  (I thought it was a picture of Hat Lamb, but Rudy says it's her.  I mean, she's the artist, but I say the confusion only proves how much Rudy and Hat love each other (see #7 in this post), and yes, I'm referring to Hat as a sentient being.