Storage Saga

Other than moving out of my parents' home into my 'married' home, I have never moved.  And that's a very good thing because I am organizationally challenged when it comes to storage.

Today my sweet Operations Christmas Child team member, Nikki, and I went on an adventure to reorganize our storage container in hopes of getting space to move things out of my home and into the container.  Our first step was to move all the loose bags of stuffed animals that filled the front of the container to the outside.

If you follow this blog you know we've been having an issue with resident skunks under the container.  But by God's grace, prayers were answered.  The traps were empty today and other than a very faint odor that came and went, we had no skunk issues.

Once we'd moved out the bulk of the items, Nikki used her expertise to begin filling empty plastic tubs with items so we could use them as a base to stack the bags of stuffed animals.  Here's a tub of like-new tennis balls--some of the nearly 2000 donated by a local tennis club.  And now they're even stored neatly.

After more than 3 hours of hot, sweaty work, we got most of the bags of animals stashed on top of cartons and tubs of items.

We split for lunch and I drove home  and reloaded my minivan with 20 more garbage bags of stuffed animals and another 1000 or so boxes of crayons.  Nikki and her grandmother spent the lunch time unboxing pencils and getting them ready to store.

We reconvened at about 2:00 p.m. and soon realized that we could never stash 20 more bags of animals in the storage container.  Prayers were answered for some alternate storage but it involved carrying all those bags up two flights of stairs.  Those shoebox workouts are great for burning calories!

We then drove back and unloaded the crayons to the front area of the container. Nikki even volunteered to be our team's new "crayon captain" and oversee the dispensing and retrieval of crayons that need to be bagged before our community-wide Operation Christmas Child packing party.  Getting 20,000 bags prepared is a colorful job.

By 3:30 p.m. I was breathing a sigh of relief because I never dreamed the container could look this good.  This was even better than having a maid come to clean my house.

If not for Nikki, I know I'd still be standing there trying to figure out what to do.    She was such a blessing and a true answer to prayer.

Rejoicing that it's out with the skunks and in with the organized storage container.