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Post by suchamess on Sept 4, 2008 16:40:09 GMT -5
 Anyone else tend to hide clutter in innovative ways? hahha I found myself today installing a girly shower curtain liner over a built in shelf of my daughter's room. It does a great job of hiding the mess....but I would like to eventually clean it up. Guess I'm just curious if I'm the only one to hide behind doors/curtains/blankets.
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Post by mouse on Sept 4, 2008 16:54:57 GMT -5
I got very creative about temporarily hiding messes when people would come by unexpectedly. Cupboards are my favourite stashing spot, but I've hidden things in the bathtub behind the curtains/doors, on high-up shelves, and beneath various bits of nicely-coloured fabric.
~Mouse
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shelley
New Member
Joined: June 2008
Posts: 3
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Post by shelley on Sept 4, 2008 17:20:36 GMT -5
Once I got a call from some friends saying they were going to stop over and they'd be there in 1/2 an hour. The house was a mess, the kitchen FULL of dirty dishes. I shoved what would fit in the oven and the rest I piled in laundry baskets, threw a towel over them and stuck them in the laundry room.
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Post by reesa on Sept 4, 2008 17:21:52 GMT -5
blankets, sheets, made into curtains. I had problems with spiders last year, they like cloth.
I still can't seem to stop hanging these in front of areas that aren't right, though
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Post by snailspace on Sept 4, 2008 17:26:41 GMT -5
I had a Christmas tree in a giant box stored in my bedroom for years, I kept a piece of fabric draped over it and used it as a very tall, very lopsided pedastal for a papier mache gargoyle. (I decluttered both long ago, but I still miss that gargoyle.)
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Post by skitter on Sept 4, 2008 18:40:44 GMT -5
shelley's story of stashing dirty dishes in the oven brought back memory of doing the same thing when company one day in the first year I was married. Everything looked lovely - all clutter was stashed when we sat down for a nice cup of tea at the kitchen table. It was then that I realized that our brand new oven had a shiny new glass window in the door, which beautifully framed my hodgepodge of dirty dishes . . . and my company was sitting right across from it. I can laugh about it now . . . almost.
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Post by brainjam on Sept 5, 2008 18:26:35 GMT -5
We've been known to carry stuff out of the house to stash in our cars' trunks before someone came a calling.
Brain Jam
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Post by anonymoose on Sept 5, 2008 22:52:46 GMT -5
Haven't had that problem in a while - the mess is too deep for my hiding places! I do recall using a deck broom to push all my garbage into the basement when my brother called from less than an hour away and I knew I didn't have time to clean it up.
Unfortunately, that was a couple of years ago and the stuff is still on the basement floor!
Oh, and I remember once moving the couch (back when I had one) into the middle of the living room, piling all the stuff I could get on it, pushing everything else around it, then covering the couch and the floor (with all the junk) with painting tarps. I happened to have a can of paint in the front closet, so I whipped that out and grabbed the ladder from the kitchen (I don't know why it was in the kitchen...it just was), then told my company they caught me in the middle of starting to paint..."sorry, no seating, we'll have to catch up later...bye now!"
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spacemaker
New Member
Space (where I can see carpet), the final frontier
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 88
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Post by spacemaker on Sept 5, 2008 23:49:03 GMT -5
Continuing the oven theme, I have not once but twice stashed dirty dishes in the oven, forgotten about them, then days later, turned on the oven to preheat it. The smell of melting storage containers or plastic drinking glasses is usually the first clue....  |
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Post by mellowyellow on Sept 6, 2008 7:24:03 GMT -5
Ah yes... "clever draping"... something I am famous for doing, since I was a little child. As if putting the fabric to cover my mess will actually fool anyone into thinking there is nothing behind the lumpy, fabricy mass. Not very clever at all. But something that I have done, (with success) comes from years of reading about Anne Frank and other Jewish people who hid away during the Nazi occupations of WWII. The Dutch people (like Corrie Ten Boon's family) were expert at taking a room, and stealing a few feet from the walls, to create a little pocket or closet that would hide (and ultimately save) hiding Jews. Of course, my reasons for creating a space is not noble like this  , but I do appreciate the ingenuity of the ideas I got: I use two large bookshelves to hide some mess in the basement. I have divided a large basement room by placing the shelves almost in the middle of the floor, hiding the clutter behind them. Between the shelves, I put a large room divider. It looks great, and really makes it seem like there is an actual wall behind the shelves. Most people who have seen the basement did not realize that it was a long, long room, because there was the illusion that the room finished at the bookshelves.  In the 7 or 8 years I've lived here, only a few people have every asked what was behind the shelves. I always just said "storage", and they weren't more curious than that. In Dec/Jan this past year, I had a big, bad flood in the basement. I was forced to remove a huge amount of the stuff/clutter behind the bookshelves. I was able to shrink down the space needed behind the bookshelves. I've moved the shelves way back, so that they are now only 4 or 5 feet away from the basement wall. There is still a jumble of clutter that I have to sort there... but now I have 3/4 of the basement room, fully functional and accessible. |
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Post by skitter on Sept 6, 2008 7:40:01 GMT -5
Spacemaker, you reminded me of something dangerous that happened to me a few times too. After broiling bacon, I had left the dirty broiler in the oven. When I turned on the oven to preheat the next day, the smell of bacon alerted me to turn off the oven. If I'd been out of the room, there would have been such a huge fire! So dangerous!!!!
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Post by BDG on Sept 6, 2008 19:34:24 GMT -5
That is a great way to design a storage space with book cases or to cover a shelf with a pretty curtain to hide clutter, making a faux window. My daughter and her husband made their first baby's nursery by putting two book cases side by side and leaving an area the size of a doorway to one side. When you were in the room you barely recognized that one wall was a bookcase, they tuned one bookcase back to the bedroom and one bookcase back toward the nursery providing each room with a bookcase and a small wall area and hung a picture on the back of the bookcase. They painted the bookcase back the same color as the rooms. It worked well. One could create an office this way in a bedroom or a large room where one wants the office completely separate. I'm not very clever at hiding things, usually I cram them in clothes baskets and pile everything on top of the bed in the guest room and lock that door until their gone, and then try and clean up. If I have not dusted or vacumed I turn off the lights and leave only a lamp on. I did not know how valuable this trick was, until one day I installed an extra light bulb in the fixture, I looked around my clean living room and now could see every speck of dust and all the stains on what before had look like a clean couch, so I got rid of that extra light bulb and made a mental note to dim lights when company came.  |
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