31 Days: Day 24 - The dryer

I have a problem. And I've had it as long as I can remember. Horizontal surfaces. They kill me. I've always been a stacker (not to be confused with 'slacker') and as long as there are horizontal surfaces around me, I will organize and stack things. They may be neat stacks, but they are still stacks and stacks, generally, are not really that attractive. I love the saying "A place for everything and everything in its place" but my problem is that I've never had a place for everything. If I don't know what to do with something, I'll just stack it up with everything else I don't know what to do with yet and at least I'll have a neat stack until I have something better. The problem with that system is that stacks don't stay neat. They get toppled and scattered and more things added to them until they look like the innards of a file cabinet strewn across a counter, or in this case, a dryer.

This is how my dryer has looked for at least a year. Actually, let's say 2 years so I won't feel dishonest.  It's just a hodgepodge of things that I haven't known what to do with and this morning, while doing laundry, I decided to fix it. Most of it went straight to the trash, the rest of it I will file. In a real filing cabinet. A few things were drawings that needed to go into my kid's individual 'stuff to keep' boxes and one thing, that I almost threw away, was something my husband's been looking for, for a while. All this time, I thought it was something else, so it was the first thing I started to pitch.

 It's the stuff we needed the night that Elliott got an award for "I Loved Her First". The parking pass, table assignment, wrist bands, etc. Elliott's been asking where it is so he can put it in his music scrap book, and I've been telling him, "It's around here somewhere." For a couple of years after this particular awards night, we've gotten invitations to the same event and for some reason, I've held onto them. I know that sounds crazy, we had no intention of going so why would I keep them? Well, they weren't just your everyday invitations. One of them was an actual vinyl record with some country song on it and the invitation specifics were printed on the label. I just couldn't throw it away. Anyway, I thought this packet was that invitation. I almost threw it in the trash without even opening it. And this would have been totally unlike me. So I will give my husband this packet when he gets home from work today and he will again remind me that I need to get started on that music scrapbook he's been wanting me to start.

Here's how disgusting it looked when I cleared off all the junk.

And here's how beautiful it looks now.

And as a reward for that little project, I think I'll just stare at this picture for a while and be thankful for my handsome and talented husband. ;)

Click here for the rest of the 31 Days challenge posts.