To all who took the time to either give me a thumbs up or write a comment about my thoughts on restarting my blog, please accept my heartfelt thank you.  I truly appreciate your support and was touched by your positive messages.

Day 2 of 20 Minutes a Day:

I have worked for the past two days, one in Ojai and one here in Beverly Hills, rearranging rooms to accommodate new furniture bought at Restore, the retail outlet of Habitat for Humanity.  

Yesterday in Ojai, we installed a new (for us) 1970s-era kitchen cabinet to help keep us organized in our stand-alone kitchen in the orange grove. The cabinet is part of a set that includes a big open shelf as well, but until we expand the kitchen, which we hope to do in the next few months, we’ll just have to use the open shelf somewhere else. Liz, Ron and I moved the existing cabinets to their new locations in the kitchen so we had room for our new acquisition. After carefully placing it (we had 1/4” to spare), we then sorted through everything in the kitchen to determine if it was needed for day-to-day versus holiday operations. The holiday stuff was hauled over to longer-term storage and the day-to-day was grouped and placed according to its importance. We even organized the spices between savory and sweet so it would be easier to find them. We were all pretty proud of our labor.  Keeping a small kitchen organized when it serves up to 10 family members on a routine basis and 25-35 family and friends on holidays is not always the easiest task to accomplish.

The final result is shown in the photos below:

Today in Beverly Hills, Ray, Rachael and I completely rearranged our spare bedroom to include a mid-century shelving unit that will help us to house more of our eBay items. It took several hours to assemble the various components of the unit, but we finally got most everything into place. (We still have a few kinks to work out.) Still, we are all very pleased with the outcome even if it looks like it will be an Advil evening, what with all the contortions necessary to get everything screwed together.  

Here is a photo of the fruit of our labor:

Thank you, Liz, Ron, Ray, and Rachael, for all your hard work. These undertakings definitely required a group effort and everybody’s sense of humor helped a lot as well.

Sometimes, I feel as though one of my primary roles in life is cleaner/organizer. I will admit to getting some real pleasure when everything is where it should be. That is not all that easy when buying and selling antiques is part of everyday life. Sometimes there’s a lot more in-coming than out-going. But, over the past two days, we have definitely made some major inroads.

I am very happy.