Musette’s Musings: on Love, Friends… and pull-out shelves

Buckle up, PosseCups!  This is gonna be a rambler – but there’ll be a giveaway at the end (because I’m not a savage).

So.  awhile ago (okay – TWO YEARS! dagNABBIT!) I wrote about my Back Porch Dreams.  I’d just talked with my Cranky Contractor, sent over the drawings… asked to get on his schedule… GOT on his schedule…

…..

…..

welp!  We’re now 18 months behind and while I still adore him (he may be LATE but when the chips are down (as when I clogged my kitchen drain and had to do the kitchen version of a sitz bath) he has always come through for me.  So.  But I was getting increasingly downhearted, especially when (not surprisingly) he somehow conflated his moving me to Very Early Spring with me having just got on his schedule!  LOL!  as if…

but he’s the Absolute Best carpenter, his work is stellar and… he does actually SHOW UP (there are several others in town who are nowhere near his quality of work and… they do NOT show up.  At All.

So I wait.  and wait.  And with each day/week/etc… I … I dunno.  I kinda lost interest.

Now.  I cannot completely lose interest because there is now a 15′ x 30′ HOLE in my garden (I’m nothing if not efficient – when my friend* Kevin rode by on his Kubota I got him to excavate because I reallllly don’t like the idea of grass growing under my porch.  Alas, that was 2 seasons and several loads of cardboard ago – but I ain’t mad.  Not much, anyway)

Here’s the deal, though.  I am not called Action Girl for nothing – and I needed a project.  The Universe, smartass that it is, came through with a Project. all right.. sigh.  My bathroom.  Sigh.  It is THE mankiest bathroom on this earth, with a 30+ year old cheap tub surround, etc… but that’s not the worst of it.  The plumbing is… ridiculous.  It sits, uninsulated, just below the floor (in an unheated ‘box’ atop … ???  The ‘drop’ (which is what allows a drain to drain efficiently) is almost nonexistent.  There’s no basement below it – O, the Plumbing Nightmares – it freezes and clogs and omg.  So… I put that on the Scope of Work schedule, thinking I/we’d get to it in a year.  But!  While awaiting the porch I had an epiphany:  if he’s that busy (and he is – I saw him scoring concrete, by himself, on a Saturday – no PPE, all that particulate blasting into his sinuses and lungs – I figure I should get my work done before he wrecks himself) – so when he came to unclog the drain (the same day I called – he stopped here after he was finished roofing somebody’s house for the day – see why I adore him?) I wriggled a little Guilt Proposal:  since he contracts out plumbing and electrical anyway and since I already have a plumberand electrician (a MASTER Electrician, thankyouverymuch) – and since he’s absurdly behind in his projects – AND I WANT MY BATHROOM! why don’t I do demo* and all he has to do is come frame it?  I’ve seen that man construct a 10′ x 30′ framing wall in under an hour, so I know this is a cakewalk for him and once he’s done I can get the rest of the job done and everybody goes away happy.  To my surprise, he agreed (That Guilt, don’tchaknow – had I been combative, maybe not.  But that gentle hint (!) of disappointment… lol!  BOOOM!shakalaka)

ew. eeeewww!

So I’ve been pulling out All the Stuff from the bathroom… and this is where the Story (sort of) ends – I realized that I do NOT need a 4’x7′ shower (omg!  The glass doors alone are over $4K!) – but what I DO NEED are cabinets… with pull-out shelves!  That, my Posse, is where my extremely limited simoleans will be going.

8! bottles of rubbing alcohol

4 bottles of peroxide

15 tubes of toothpaste (TO BE FAIR… this was one of those El O things where, when he went to Sam’s he would buy 3-pack toothpaste.  I now have enough toothpaste for at least … forever?)

Body wash.  SO MUCH BODY WASH.

Body lotion.  Which I don’t even use (why do I have all that? Blame El O (?)

Here’s the thing:  if it’s in the back of a deep cabinet (or, if we’re really honest, ANY cabinet) it’s out of sight/out of mind.  and more and more keeps getting bought and you think ‘oh, I have WAY too much of this/that – I won’t need to buy it again for XXX – except you do (I have bought at least 6 tubes of toothpaste in the past months, completely forgetting about those 15 tubes in the back of that 36″ deep cabinet)

The solution (as I see it) : cabinets with pull-out shelves.  Originally designed for kitchens (and you can betcherbippy I’m splurging on those for the kitchen reno), it’s an excellent way to keep track of what you already have.  Going to the grocery?  Check your pantry.  Check your bathroom.  If you already have 6 bottles of X you probably don’t need another.  Ain’t NOBODY need 8 bottles of alcohol (unless it’s the imbibing kind, in which case have at it!).  But if you have to dig through (and risk dropping) a squickton of stuff in a cabinet… eh… just figure you might not have it and get another one.  Until you end up with 8.  (and don’t talk to me about Planning Ahead, checking and making a list.  Shut up.  (insert Crazed emoji)

I’ve contemplated adding them to the Messy Armoire, since nothing terrifies me more than the thought of dropping a bottle of, say, Aromatics Elixir.  Or Opium.  But I’ve downsized my collection and the Messy Armoire is on carpet and I have limited simoleans at this time so … (insert shrug emoji).  But that bathroom haul was just ridiculous.  I don’t overindulge in perfume but I do, apparently, overindulge in Vanicream (I have 6 jars of it scattered around my house and several in the cabinet.  TO BE FAIR… I do use that on the daily.  But those impulse purchases of Cheap and Cheerful Italian bodywash that reminds me of my time on Lido?  Um..

So pull out shelves it is (they call them shelves because I guess, by definition, any drawer is pull-out.

Do any of you have them?  Do any of you just… LOSE stuff in the back of cabinets?   5 totes of ‘stuff’ is just embarrassing.  ‘Fess up!  I’ll have to pull a winner since M. Jacques is laughing at me from above (I had a mouse nest land on me (it had made the nest in the ceiling above the light fixture – ew) and an earwig got stuck in my cleavage.

And btw * = Friends (hence the title).  I love my contractor.  I do.  But I love my friends more – my electrician is the husband of my very good friend here and he (and his assistant, also now a friend) rewired my house for DINNER! because they were so terrified that the insane wiring (an El O Special – he’d ‘temporarily’ run the wires… and it stayed thus until Mary (my friend) saw it and told her husband to come look – and he nearly had a heart attack!  Next week they were here, rewiring that box.

My plumber is my sister’s son-in-law and he ain’t letting no old lady lived with a backed-up bathtub.  So … friend.

I am blessed.  Happy.  Tired AF because I’m doing a lot of the heavy lifting  (again, though, FRIEND!  Mary is helping me demo!  Tonight we’re going rip those tiles out of the ceiling.  Luckily I have all the PPE and, unlike my Cranky Contractor, I ain’t afraid to wear it!  Goggles, dust masks, protective suits!)