I’m on a mission. I decided to clean out the storage shed. Turns out it is not self-cleaning. The dogs won’t listen to me when I suggest it to them and seven years of hubby’s retirement hasn’t resulted in any change.

It’s up to me.

Saturday I spent about two hours working on it. Sunday I lifted, shifted, recycled and trashed for three hours. The recycling stash got quite large. We’ll be taking everything in this week.

I only had the small 13-gallon garbage bags when I started, and that just wouldn’t do. An early-morning trip to Home Depot took care of that. We now have a box of 50-gallon garbage bags sitting on the shelf. The shelf, I might add, of the brand-new shelving unit that I also brought home from Home Depot and put together myself.

Hubby thinks that most of that junk is mine. Seriously? I found Boy Scout badges, recycled size 11 (men’s) shoe boxes, picked up university Russian books from a year that would have put me in 6th grade and re-boxed retriever training magazines from the early ’90s. And that’s just a sample.

I mentioned to hubby on Friday that I was going to start cleaning out the shed. He said, “Okay.”

“Okay” it is, then. And I’ll do it my way: with 50-gallon bags, a new shelving unit, clear plastic boxes, and trips to the recycling center each week. (Probably not what Frank Sinatra was singing about, but if the size 11 shoe box fits …)

I recently cleaned my closet floor. Besides the hiking sock I was looking for, I found a myriad of hangers. An evolutionary trail of hangers, really.

Hanger evolution

The top hanger in the photo is the pants hanger, favored among dry cleaners. The white metal hanger is on the third row. I think the black hanger was its precursor. Unfortunately, the small, metal hangers tend to be too narrow and leave little peaks in my t-shirt shoulders; little peaks that stick up while I’m wearing the t-shirt. I can see them out of the corner of my eye and tend to turn my head from time to time, trying to figure out what it is that seems out of place. The peaks only come out in the wash, which doesn’t do me any good, because I hang them up when I take them out of the dryer and by the time I choose a t-shirt to wear it, the peaks have been reinstated.

The next step in hanger evolution was the plastic hanger. It was really just a wire hanger with a plastic coating. The one in this photo is pink (second row). It had the same affect on my t-shirts: peaked shoulders.

Then a technology jump occurred in the hanger world: Real plastic hangers. Here you can see two versions: one without the curly-cues and one with (second row). These are definitely more substantial than the wire or plastic-coated wire hangers. They are wider and do a good job in supporting my t-shirts.

Hubby complained, however, that they took up too much room. They are fat. And slippery; clothes fall off of them onto the closet floor. Fine. I found some slender hangers with stuff on the ends that prevented any slippage (third row).

Then there are, of course, the cheap plastic hangers that retail stores send home with you, even though you don’t want them. I have two of my scarves on these hangers so you can see them better; they are almost invisible against the white closet door.

I didn’t get out samples of my coat hangers; they are in a different closet. The plastic hangers don’t always work well with heavy coats; they bend in the middle and then the coat tends to slip off onto the closet floor.

Who knew it was so hard to keep closet floors clean?

I accidentally cleaned my closet floor. I was looking for a sock. I had one hiking sock in view but could not see its mate. I needed them to go for my walk at Lady Bird Lake. It was cold, around 28 degrees, and I wanted to wear my warm hiking boots. I wasn’t interested in freezing my little tootsies off on a 4-mile walk, so I didn’t want to wear my running shoes; they are, by nature, breezy.

Downtown Austin at dawn, from Lady Bird Lake

To wear my hiking boots, I needed my hiking socks, as in both of them. That led me to pick up everything, layer by layer, up off the closet floor. Oh, I finally found the missing sock but not before I had re-shelved shorts, jeans and sweatshirts, swept the floor and arranged all the shoes.

It wasn’t what I had planned for my Sunday, but I reaped the benefits of my efforts as I walked 4 miles on Lady Bird Lake in freezing temperatures with warm feet.

(I felt like a 7-layer dip with the way I was dressed, but other than my split lip from the freezing dry air, I didn’t have any problems with the cold.)