TCIH: "A great place for storage!"

I'm baaaack with another edition of True Confessions of an Imperfect Homeowner, where I remind myself that it's OK to not be Martha Stewart. Rick and I definitely don't know what we're doing as we play house, but we're having fun learning. If you're just recently joining in, the first post was about how cat hair is taking over our house and the second was about our moldy refrigerator leftovers.

This time, the idea for a topic began with me not being able to find a pair of scissors. Now, I own, I think, 8 pairs of scissors. Eight. I am fairly certain that a scissor thief lives in this house, though, because I can rarely find a pair of them, and usually when I do, it's these weird bent ones that came with the pack of normal, healthy scissors. So our thief is not only sneaky, but also smart. He/she knows that the bent ones are just plain too mysterious to be useful.

(What are these for, anyway? Torture?)

So in my quest to find a non-deformed pair of scissors, I opened our storage ottoman. Remember that? The one we built ourselves so that we'd have A Great Place to Put Stuff and it would be Such a Happy Thing?

Well. We have taken that concept of "putting stuff" very, very seriously. I opened it up, and here's what I found in one half of it:

 
See what happens when you abuse great storage options? Sunshiney skies fade. Flowers keel over. Sweetly singing birds morph into repulsive HorseMen lounging about in swanky pleather club chairs. It's like what would have happened if the clown from It had showed up to be Cinderella's fairy godmother. 

From my cursory view of the surface, no scissors were in sight. I was tempted to close the lid and walk away, but we've been discussing how we should be using it to store items other than our garbage things we shove in there when company is coming over, so out it all came.  And let me tell you, I found some great stuff. Some stuff that proves we were definitely abusing the "great storage" feature of our great storage ottoman.

 It was like a treasure hunt for lame people.

I ended up throwing a bunch of stuff away and added a bunch to the "future yard sale" pile. Then, I filled the ottoman with birds and sunshine our game collection, a few magazines that made the cut, my vat of paint chips, and Rick's piano books (which were formerly housed in a large broken plastic drawer placed on the floor a la freshman year dorm decor). All of these items are generally used in or near the living room, anyway. Unlike the map of New Jersey, except that one time we took everything out of the ottoman and pretended it was a car while singing "The Wheels on the Bus."  But I wasn't going to mention that.

Basically, I've realized that "storage" in this case was a euphemism for "a place to stash the junk that you don't feel like putting in its proper location or thinking about." However, our ottoman has looked like the above picture for 3 weeks and looks the same, and we've even had company over a few times. I think it helps that there are items designated to be in there, because then we don't just toss in every loose item and call it a day.

I still haven't found my entire collection of scissors, however. Of course, this may be because our ottoman is obviously not the only "stuff graveyard" in our house. That closet in the hall, those drawers in the hutch...for all I know, the Horse Man has a wife and eight kids with matching velvet robes. (Optimum conception for creepy horseman babies is, after all, amid a massive pile of junk. You wish you could have left this post without that tidbit, am I right?)

Summary of points:  
1) Try to use giant storage graveyards ottomans to store specific large items.
2) Make sure those specific large items are generally used in the same vicinity of the storage graveyard ottoman.
3) Try to refrain from shoving all manner of garbage in there just to hide it from company.
4) Don't adopt a tiny Horse Man because you feel sorry for him. He will abuse your sympathy and kindness.


So what is YOUR "great storage spot" where household items go to die? Any tips for staying organized? Go ahead. Confess. You know you want to. :)

P.S. Do you have an imperfection you'd like to confess? Email me with your fun ideas: I'd love to feature some of your stories!