An indoor winter project

Today's project has been purging.

I started out to purge a big tote of training equipment but the coat tree got in the way. This sort of thing happens a lot at our house.

If our house had closets like a normal house this wouldn't have been an issue. The coats would have been in a closet, out of sight, out of mind. But our house is not normal. It was built in 1919 and I guess people didn't have as much stuff back then because they sure didn't waste any time building closets. There is exactly one closet on the first floor and it's a weird sort of little after-thought affair tucked under the stairs in our bedroom. There are four bedrooms upstairs and only two closets. And they're not big either, let me tell ya.

So there were about 30 coats hanging on the coat tree because where else are ya gonna put them?

Okay, I exaggerate. I think there were 15 coats. Not counting the ones on hooks by the kitchen door and in the basement. The Farmer and I take our coats very seriously.

Anyway, I was carrying the training equipment tote out to the living room to sort through it and something caught on the coat tree when I walked by and pretty soon, the day was turning into one of those deals where each new project I start leads to something else that has to be done first and before long, I have 10 new projects started and nothing actually finished.

But I did purge the coat tree. It was amazing. I have three rain coats. I was not aware of that. It was like a raincoat archaeological dig. At what point in my life, knowing I already had a perfectly good raincoat, did I decide I need to buy another raincoat? What's worse, at what point, knowing I already had two perfectly good raincoats, did I decide, let's get a THIRD!

Aside from the raincoats, I also have a jacket for pretty much every meteorological condition possible. Several of them are going to Goodwill. Trust me - no one needs that many coats.

I finally did get the training tote purged. It confirmed several things. I have the same problem with collars that I have with raincoats, only 10 times worse. The good thing about purging dog gear is that my club has a garage sale table at our spring obedience trial so it's a good time to get rid of all that stuff that seems to accumulate over the year and make some money in the process. We also have a kick-ass raffle which provides excellent donating potential.

Phoenix "helped" by casually walking by, then grabbing something and running off with it. I think he was dismayed by the amount of gently loved odds-and-ends toys that were being donated to the raffle.