Piano Room — Check!

Well, I did it — I finished sorting out the piano room this week. I chose it as a starting point because it seemed pretty straight-forward. Basically, the more storage a room has, the more of a hidden nightmare it is for me. And the piano room only has a closet and the cabinet (above), so I figured it couldn’t be too bad. It wasn’t, really, but it certainly did take some time.
My goal with the house overhaul is to feel, at the end, like I don’t have extra clutter. Nothing stashed away to be dealt with later. I’m trying not to hold onto things just for the ‘what if’ factor (and… mostly succeeding). The piano room (‘hall’) closet was a good example of this — previously, if something fit in there, I figured I might as well hang on to it.

No longer! I weeded out a few coats I’ll never wear again, along with several cardigans. I went through some papers and marveled at the fact that I had deemed the show-floor tag from my coffee table worth hanging on to (more like it was easier to stash it than throw it). Stuff like that. And now I can actually see the floor of my hall closet, AND the door shuts. It’s never latched (it’s an old door), and the overflow of coats used to keep it propped open a few inches. Now that it’s cleared out and I’ve got a shoe hanger on the back of the door (with hooks over the top of it), I can neatly wedge the door shut. I keep finding myself surprised by its shut-ness when I walk by.
The rest of the room didn’t need much work. I bought some LP frames with birthday money and framed a few sleeves from Elvis Costello albums. Those are over the piano now, and I think they go nicely with the print I bought at the Gutenberg museum in Mainz. The only other piece of art on the walls is the letter-pressed sign I got at my very first Frankfurt Book Fair.
The rest of the (limited) wall space (it’s a small room) is taken up by my bookcases. I originally bought that smaller case, the one under the window, intending to paint it white, for the cookbooks in the kitchen. Wait, no! I bought it for the piano room, but I didn’t like it with the previous set up, so it just wound up in the kitchen. I was going to paint it white after that, though, but I’m glad I didn’t, because it’s back in the piano room, after all. It doesn’t really go with the other furniture, but it does do the job of housing the rest of my books; there are hardly any now that aren’t in the piano room (like… only a few dozen, plus all my cookbooks).
Oh, the little white bench to the right of the cabinet in the top photo? That’s the cats’ bathroom water plinth. I put it there months and months ago, when Booty had some stomach bug and was hanging out in the bathroom a lot (because it’s a dark and cool room). I don’t keep water in it all the time, but I occasionally fill it with tap water from the bathroom sink, and you’d think it was a hundred times better than the tap water I put in their usual water bowl (in the kitchen). I think it’s just the novelty. If one cat hears the other drinking from the bathroom water bowl, she (or he) has to come running to get some for her- or himself. Cats, eh?
Anyway, my bedroom is this week’s project. I’m willing to admit it might take longer than a week, although I did start going through my dresser a while ago. I’m going to try to be fairly merciless — any clothing I don’t love has to go. Eep.