My my my

One of the things I notice in other folk's homes are books. Do they have any and if they do, what are they. I know a woman who has a shelf filled with books on healthy diets and doing away with the clutter in your life. She eats mostly processed food heavy on the sugar side and is as close to a hoarder as anyone can be without actually being one.

I, on the other hand, appear to have no books because mine are all safely filed away in my kitchen cabinets where they won't get dirty or dusty.

I have four things hung on my walls. One is a photograph of a real scene copying Monet's garden, another a signed poster from an Oscar winning film and two are pictures of family, both old and new. One hangs on magnets and hides the circuit breaker panel.

The tops of my cupboards serve as mini museums of my life's collections. Everything else was culled out on a cross country move six years ago.

I have a step in closet. (That is smaller than a walk in and larger than one where you can't get your foot in the door.) I can get my whole body, a cafe table and two chairs, a walker, a cane, an extra comforter, two suitcases, a sewing machine, three coats, two jackets, a Halloween costume, a Christmas sweatshirt, a teddy bear box filled with mementos, the vacuum cleaner, and most of my clothes in it.

I have a desk that triples as a desk and a storage space for my camera, stamps, and all my underwear!

I have a chest of drawers that doubles as a tv table and place for my pajamas and turtleneck shirts. It has a secret drawer!

The bathroom hides a shower chair, which doubles as a dining chair, when I have more than three people over for dinner. And I store my medical bills in a stylish Ransom Center Library bag, hanging on the back of the door.

I even have a hobby that requires approximately 48 cubic feet of space, tucked onto a bookshelf and my kitchen island, but it hides under an elegant scarf and never gets in the way of cooking dinner.

My dining room table can be folded up and tucked away beside the refrigerator or left out to sort laundry from the stacked washer and dryer tucked up in a small laundry closet. Holiday decorations are packed away in a low under the bed box on top of that dryer.

I keep wrapping supplies, DVDs, and a rather nice purse collection hidden under the bed. 

Now, even if you saw all this, or knew all of it was there, there are still lots of surprises tucked away here and there. It's hard to be private in such a small space, but totally possible. Everything in my world has more than one purpose. Even my printer serves as a display place.

My neighbors are an interesting mix of nationalities, students, retirees, and big foot who lives above me with his pet Bam Bam.  I have never met the last two creatures, but they keep me apprised of their whereabouts by an easy to hear Morse Code on my ceiling.

And the good news is that people here tend to come and go in six to twelve month intervals that I don't mind at all.

My thots, my world, my way . . .