WIP Wednesday - Secundus Intervention

While the boys were away dropping Daniel off at college, I decided to stage an intervention.  Secundus' room was a disaster area. This is all the stuff I raked out from under his bed.  I estimate at least 2 years of debris.  I pulled the bed out and thoroughly vacuumed underneath, combing the carpet first for candy wrappers and thumbtacks.

He has been "doing his own laundry" for a few years now, but for him that means piling stuff on the floor of his closet (his dresser was almost empty).  I assume anything on the floor is dirty unless told otherwise, so I just dumped it all into a couple of loads to make sure.  Oh, and when he talks me into buying new shoes, he never throws away the shoeboxes; there were at least 7 shoeboxes in his closet.  There were also 3 ripped up backpacks, still stuffed with notebooks and papers from school.  I recycled most of his papers.  Our recycling bin is too full for the rest this week -- seriously, more paper weight than I could carry in two loads!

The surprise element, and the spur for all of this, is the new mattress he's getting on his bed when he gets back Friday.  For 13 years the boys have both slept on pretty low-quality bunk-bed mattresses, even after we separated the bunks and they started not liking being stuck with the springs.  So I went to Sleep Country USA Monday and ordered an upgrade.  If Daniel is reading this he has a reason to look forward to coming home for Christmas, too!  But Secundus is really hard on the furniture.  I mean, really hard!  His bunky board had only 2 intact slats out of seven... he had broken all the others.  And the mattresses were being delivered just a few hours after I bought them, so I didn't have time or a large enough car to go out and buy a plywood sheet cut to the right size for a bedboard - I still want to do this, but it will have to wait.  So I had to call up my limited carpentry skills, fetch the miter box, cut (and then recut) 5 lengths of scrap 1x2's or 1x3's.  I think it will do.  It's certainly better than before.  I poked my right thumb with a staple and hit my left thumb with the hammer in the process.  I would like someone else to be the handy one for awhile, please!

But look at that!  It still has that new mattress smell!  Of course, I'm going to have to convince Secundus not to use his pocketknife on it anymore.  Do you think he'll forgive me for cleaning his room?

I sorted his socks after the laundry was done.  Here are 28 pairs, which would be enough with what he has with him on his Great American Road Trip to wear for an entire month without doing laundry.  And I'm not counting the shoebox full of orphan socks that still need matches.

Since most of you are here for the quilts, I thought I'd take some closeups of the quilt on his bed.  I made it 8 years ago and it's called "Cars and Trucks and Things that Go Go Go" or something like that.  At the top is a spaceship...

The Man in the Yellow Hat is flying a helicopter to rescue Curious George...

Bob the Tomato is driving the school bus with Goldilocks and the Three Bears...

If you flip open the door you can see Larry the Cucumber...

I put our green van and Uncle Andy's pickup on there...

The Amazing Spider-man is perched on the ambulance to remind Secundus of the "Spider-man on the swingset" incident which took him to the ER for one of his many trips.

 

At the bottom a peaceful sailboat on a pond next to Pooh and Tigger playing...

A train runs across some rails, with Flash or Dash or some other superhero going faster than a locomotive.  That's a fire truck partially obscured above it.

I know this is an 8-year-old quilt, but I wanted to share it because it hasn't been shared before, and I sure haven't done any other quilting this past week!  Most of the designs came from either Block Magic/ Block Magic Too, or Tender Loving Covers.  He hasn't destroyed it, so maybe that means Secundus likes it a little bit too.

For the yarn-along, I am soaking Summer Flies prior to blocking it, and beside it is the World magazine from back in February that I have been working on trying to finish all week long.  Yes, it's been that kind of a week.  And school starts next week... yikes!

Well, it's been fun but I need to go back upstairs and finish cleaning.  It's been three full days and I'd love to get it all done before the guys get home.