All about EAVE

Enter this post at your own risk.  What you are about to see is not pretty.  The worst part is I don't even have pretty pictures of the finished work because it just doesn't lend itself to anything remotely pretty.  My blog is the real deal, the good, the bad, and the ugly (less of the ugly I hope)!

Sometimes when we have a big task in front of us it can be overwhelming to the point where we simply keep putting it off.  That only makes matters worse.  I have learned (with big credit to my hero man) to break big projects down into manageable blocks of time.  Before you know it, you have made enough progress that you don't even want to stop because it is no longer too big to face, it has actually become rewarding.

You see, my house has what are called eaves and that is where I store all of my off season items.  The particular eave I have had issue with as of late is the eave that houses all of my Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving/Fall decorations.

For those of you who may not be familiar with eaves, they serve a purpose on a home to overhang the roof from the exterior wall of the house to help deal with rain water, they can also be helpful with ventilation and last but not least they can assist with solar heating depending on the home's design.    In a home like mine, which is a cape, the interior of the eave leaves a fairly decent size empty space between the wall of the inside room and where the eave actually ends.  Most builders will help you capitalize on this space by building a door on the exterior wall so you can gain access to the space. 

Here is a picture of an eave:



I did my Christmas deconstruction last weekend but did not let myself store all of the remains in the eaves right away.  I told myself I could not put anything in there until I pulled everything out and did a complete inventory of what I had.  I also wanted to organize everything before putting it back.  I knew there were a lot of things I just did not use anymore and would not be using again.  I also wanted to label all of the containers so that next year I would have a much easier time.

Well this is easier said than done.  You see, eaves have a slanted ceiling so you have to duck down to get in and out and it is a royal pain in the you-know-what to spend much time in and out of them.  Well yesterday and today was my day to tackle this job.  My hero man and I were both under the weather this weekend so I decided if I was going to be inside all weekend, I was going to at least be productive.

So here it comes, here come the pictures of what it all looked like after we pulled everything out and I started doing a complete inventory (I am only sharing the least disturbing pictures-for your safety and my dignity).  Please skip the pictures all together if hoarding is a fear of yours---this is nasty!
Trust me, for the amount of time the room looked like this I was in pre-panic attack mode myself.

Yup, that's a bushy halloween wig on top of that mess!!  We know how to have fun in this house.

Nutcrackers this size creep me out a bit.  I was happy to put him away for a year.

This photo just makes me dizzy.

I was thrilled to find an unopened bag of pop rocks in my inventory phase of the project.  I ripped that baby open and had me some Rice Krispies on steriods.  Yummy.

Well I am so happy to report I got the job done and it feels fantastic.  Next year will be so much easier when it comes time to decorate and as a bonus I got rid of a ton of stuff.  Some for the trash and some for a yard sale I have planned for this spring.  That will be a whole other post (or two).  I have the mother of all yard sales planned for the spring.  My house will look like I have become a minimalist when it is all said and done.  Can't wait!

-Lisa