Lost & Found

Things found this weekend, while cleaning B's room (guest coming tomorrow who will be sleeping there) and looking for stuff in the garage (B is going on an overnight camping trip with her class):

• My copy of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door, which B and I were looking for a couple of months ago,
• A stuffed animal named "Patrick," whom M has been looking for,
• Much dirty laundry, some of it already outgrown (apparently B has been using the cram-it-all-into-the-closet method when asked by DH to clean her room),
• The utensils for B's Playmobil kitchen, which I have been searching for for six years! We bought her the dollhouse when she was 3, so I didn't put the small pieces out, just the large furniture. We moved to San Diego in 2002, and when she was old enough for the utensils, I couldn't find them anywhere! Those Playmobil boxes finally turned up today, wrapped in a Target bag, in an unlabeled box containing a magazine rack. DH is trying to claim it wasn't his fault, but I know that if _I_ had, for some unknown reason, decided that a magazine rack and dollhouse furnishings belonged together, I would have put a LABEL on the box!

B and I also took the opportunity to go through the dresser to remove outgrown clothes, and the bookshelf to remove outgrown books. Now, her dresser drawers close, her closet opens, her stuffed-animal basket is no longer overflowing, and her bookshelf has room for the books she actually reads. My living room is still a disaster area (guess where all those books are currently stacked?), and I still haven't finished strapping the bookcases (yes, all the tools are lined up in front of the living room fireplace, along with the ladder), but at least one room looks better!