Lavender to the Rescue

I don't often buy paper or cardboard goods from the thrift store because you can't really clean them. I invested in this hat box because other than the unpleasant thrift-store odor it was in pristine condition. All I needed to do was get rid of the smell, and that just required a trick my grandmother taught me.

Dried lavender will erase almost any smell if you let it sit with what you're deodorizing in an enclosed space. Since the hat box came with a lid I just lined in with some paper towels, added a layer of lavender, covered it up and let it sit for two weeks undisturbed (I added the little square wicker box on top of the lavender because it was a bit smelly, too.)

My hat box smells only a little of lavender now, and not at all like the thrift store.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

I have lavender drawer liner paper that I use for that because sometimes, my lavender doesn't do well and I don't harvest much. Some years, I have tons to dry. This year, I didn't have much at all :(

September 26, 2022 at 4:59 AM

Maria Zannini said…

The hat box is cute. What are you going to do with it?

September 26, 2022 at 7:50 AM

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

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