Don’t open that door Mcgee!

So, Older Brother came out with his family for a visit. It’s always nice to see them.
One of the things we had talked about was Dad’s storage room and the need for a cleaning.
Dad has been buying, selling and collecting old toys for at least a decade now. One of the odd effects of Ebay, is that since people sell more stuff online, there are fewer and fewer toy shows. Less gets sold, more accumulates.
And now we have a ten by ten room, piled high with boxes of things, model airplanes hanging from the ceiling, shelves line the walls with many strange and wonderful things piled haphazardly on them. You can barely open the door and squeeze down the narrow corridor of paraphernalia to the computer at the other end of the room. There is barely room to sit and work on the computer.

Stuff accumulates on top of stuff until what is at the bottom may be lost to this world and squeezed into another dimension.

And I had suggested to OB, that we attempt some organization. For dad and step-mom are overwhelmed by the mess. What they need are some disinterested people to plow through the drifts of clutter.

It’s a battle, but we are not distracted by the colored metal toy cars from 1940, the balsa wood models from the 50’s or the painted lead soldiers.
At first there is barely room for the two of us, then a box of garbage goes out, four bags of old books go out. Soon we can move. Now we actually have places where we can set down our cups!

SM keeps the coffee pot going.
Three hours in and we stop for a quick lunch and then back into the trenches. I repack two shelves and clear a space around the boxes that are piled up to my chin. Shift and restack, I gain six square feet!
We are vicious in our destruction, we toss out copies of DOS 5.0 and Windows 95 disks. Old magazines from 1992 go into the recycle bin.

We have made great progress and begin to wind down. Our dad comes in to help a little, but he is to easily sidetracked by discoveries. OB and I quickly categorize and place in boxes.

OB stands and surveys the six by six area of empty space in the middle of the room. He turns and looks at the untouched pile of boxes by the door. As he looks up at the top of the boxes, he turns a little pale. “There is a door behind these boxes!”
“And a closet stuff with God knows what, behind the door!”
“You’re kidding!”
“Don’t open that door, McGee!”
Both my dad and OB chuckle at the phrase, as does SM in the other room. OB’s wife and daughter don’t understand (as do any of you if you are under 60)

“We won’t get o the closet today. That will be for another day.”
My brother sighs in relief.

The shop-vac is brought in and it sucks up all the little bits of stuff that have fallen to the floor and into the cracks between boxes, under shelves and behind the computer desk.. Bags of garbage are carried out until the huge garbage can filled. The paper recycling bin is full also.
Shelves are dusted and displayed toys are boxed.
We are done. Dad and SM cannot believe the room they now have. I sit at the computer and have plenty of elbow room.
They are flabbergasted and you can see the joy in their eyes.

“There are three boxes of tax and business record that you need to go through. But that is for a later day.”
“But now we have room to do it!” says SM. “Thank you. Thank you!”
They must have thanked us a dozen more times as we finished up and straightened a few more things. Then it was time to go home.

Epilog
I stopped by a week later to hook up a new LCD monitor and drop off some pics for SS.
They had cleaned out two boxes of business records and some of the cabinets had been attacked. One was now empty and the other was neat and organized.
They just needed a little push and some room to work in.

Does anyone want to buy a Spitfire model, all assembled and ready to fly? It has a four foot wingspan and it must take a huge engine.