A little more Bob Vila, a little less Tim Allen

I am a fricking home improvement GENIUS. Since I’ve been on this “fixing up the house” kick, I’ve spent all my free time, well, fixing up the house. And it gives me an immense sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Now here’s where I admit something. My house is a little over 1200 square feet. It has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It has a large entry hall closet, and each bedroom has a walk-in closet. The closet in my room is practically the size of the guest bathroom. And yet? I can’t find anywhere to store anything. It ends up that stuff is haphazardly piled everywhere and I can never find anything. This does not work for me.

So I took matters into my own hands and bought this. I thought it would be your typical “you only need a screwdriver” type of assembly, but it turns out that while I did need a screwdriver, I also needed a tape measure, pencil, hammer, level, and drill. Luckily I have all those things, and more importantly? I know how to use them. This little shelving unit requires actual mounting into the wall and so the OCD kicked in and I drew pencil lines all over the closet so that I made sure everything was straight and level. I finally finished it yesterday afternoon and spent last night reorganizing my fantastic new closet.

I can’t wait to show Not Boyfriend, because I think he thinks that just because I’m a girl, I can’t use tools properly. He called while I was installing the shelves, and was quizzing me on wall stud placement and why they call anchors “butterflies.” Dude – my dad can build and/or fix anything on this planet, and I spent every weekend as a kid either watching or helping him do carpentry projects. And, I’ve lived alone for four years – I know from fixing and building stuff. I fully admit that there are some things I can’t do, but I leave those to my dad. And Not Boyfriend is a “professional” fix-it guy, because he works in construction, so I allow him to tell me things that maybe I already know. I might not know the technical name for everything, but I usually know what to do with it. And you know what? If I waited around for those two to do all these things for me, I’d end up sitting in a corner, rocking back and forth and mumbling about how I know those Christmas ornaments are around here somewhere, but because the closets are such a mess, I’ll just never know. As a result, I did it myself and am now unbelievably proud of my accomplishment. I keep opening the closet, just to look at it.

I don’t have any pictures for you today – so we’re going to be celebrating Halloween for a few more days this week, and that’s just how it’s going to be. The reason is that I had my brother’s camera to document my weekend, and that means I am now at his mercy as far as when he gets around to downloading my photos. However, I promise that sometime in the very near future, you will have pictures of me in my costume, the Halloween Cats, and the house in my complex that I have (very appropriately, I think) named “The house where Halloween threw up.” You will love it.