Spring Cleaning Done Sprung Me!

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Spring cleaning done “sprung” me in places I didn’t even know were parts of me!

 

Between playing pickle ball since October three days a week for at least two hours every time and playing wally ball every weekend for two hours at a time for the past month, I figured I was pretty well-exercised and ready to roll with the punches when it came time to clean out and rearrange the shed that sits in our back yard.

 

So, after playing pickle ball for two hours on Friday, I drove home and emptied the shed. (It’s about 12 feet wide and 16 feet long.) That part of the chore took about an hour, I suppose.

 

At that time, the yard appeared half-filled with stuff and such.

 

While I waited for Jackie to return from pickle ball (she played 3.5 hours yesterday), I went through the various plastic cartons that belong to me and weeded out what I no longer deem precious or valuable. (More on that a little later.)

 

When Jackie returned, I stopped going through my stuff (which I had consolidated into fewer plastic boxes) and we went through all the communal stuff to see what we wanted to keep, donate, or throw away.

 

As we decided what to keep, what to take into the house, and what to store again (Jackie’s seasonal decorations, various motor oils, garden supplies, gift wrap by the barrel, goat-mucking tools, etc.) we packed back into the shed what would be staying there.

 

Little by little, we stored everything into tight little niches and found, to our amazement, that there’s a lot of room in there now.

 

We loaded the garbage into the bed of our obsolete goat truck, toted some good stuff (kids toys, bikes, etc.) out to the road (I put a FREE sign on it), and created a pile of broken-down tools so the fellow who stopped by here several months ago looking for metal to recycle can haul it off, recycle it, and keep the money he gets for it.

 

I have to tell you, by the end of the day I was crippling around like a 92 year old. Every step was agony and my back was aching. I didn’t think I’d be able to play wally ball the next day, but I took Tylenol and did it anyway.

 

Today, I feel almost completely back to normal. It didn’t take long to recover, thankfully!

 

I just wish I had taken Before and After pictures of the shed, to remind us NEVER to let it get that  out of hand again! We couldn’t even move in there without risking life and limb. Now it’s a cinch to find and get what we need.

 

And Now, Back to My Rediscovered “Spring Cleaning” Treasures… 

 

I found treasures that I thought had been lost forever during various moves.

 

I have an album of articles and other things I wrote during my time with the Animal Protection Institute.

 

I found articles and journals I completed in community college that are amazing.

 

I found the huge three-ring binder album that has literally hundreds of slides of Deaken as a youngster which I can now get printed and offer to online image catalogs who will pay me per image over and over again for their use.

 

The slide album also has scores of images of me with notable animal welfare folks like Cleveland Amory, Belton Mouras, etc., and of me in Idaho building transport cages for beavers while I was with the Animal Protection Institute.

 

I haven’t gone through the slides minutely yet, but when I do, I expect to find additional treasured images in it that I presumed were lost forever.

 

What surprises me is to see how good-looking I (now, in retrospect) find myself in the 30’s. I’ve never considered myself good-looking. I never pondered my looks in the mirror because I considered myself okay-looking, but nothing to write home about!

 

The most surprising–and by far the happiest “find” of all–were  two copies of the blueprints for DeForest and Carolyn Kelley’s home in Sherman Oaks, which I had looked for time and time again in my Kelley archives in the garage and not been able to locate.

 

When I told the Kelley’s that their home was the first home I had ever walked into and felt immediately at home in–as if I’d designed it for myself–I asked if they had the blueprints for it. De said they did, and then they went out and had two copies of them made for me (one for me, one for my Dad, a retired general contractor) so he could build me one just like it someday.

 

You may be sure that when I move to Costa Rica (or wherever I end up, when I finally decide, but I think it will be Costa Rica), I plan to buy land and have the home recreated so I can live in it!

 

The Kelley’s had a modest little single-level home. It was probably less than 2000 total square feet in size, including the garage. No one would ever believe an international icon lived there. But he and Carolyn did,  since 1964. They bought it for $24,000 or $26,000 (I don’t recall, now, the price they told me).

 

I’ll have a solar roof put on it in Costa Rica and have the back workroom wall replaced with windows the same way the Kelley’s did so I can see out when I’m writing. I’ll also have French doors put into the master bedroom the way they did if the original house plan doesn’t include them. (I believe De told me one time that he’d had those added so they could sleep with them open. He loved to have them open when it rained because the sound of rain was so soothing to them. The back yard of their place was large and well-secluded behind a cement block wall that was about six feet tall.)

 

Carolyn and  DeForest Kelley’s home in Sherman Oaks, CA (since torn down and replaced with a McMansion, sadly…)

DeForest Kelley's home in Sherman Oaks

Needless to say, I’m over the moon about finding those blueprints…and now I want to move to Costa Rica tomorrow (which simply isn’t possible).

 

My next spring cleaning project will be the goat shed. I plan to tackle it on Tuesday or Thursday. It’s going to be quite the undertaking!

 

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Kris Smith

1 Comment

  1. Jane Phillips on March 17, 2019 at 6:53 pm

    Congrats on your finds, Kris! I began spring cleaning my condo yesterday—all I found was DUST! Enjoy all of your treasures!

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