We have lived in our present home since 2002. Due to reason’s beyond our control we could not do anything to the house for several years. The house is over 200 years old and needed lots of updating as most old farmhouses do. Each year we had a bucket list of things that needed attention or changes. We also had 500+ acres of farmland and beef cattle to care for. Closets were the least of our worries!!
Finally this spring I got to clean out a very small closet under the stairs which were on the west side of our living room. We rarely used it BUT it needed to be cleaned out and cleaned up!!
Door in living room that enters the closet under the stairs. Duck down or bump your head!!
It was full of boxes of dishes, old farm receipts, tax papers dating back as far as the 1960’s, some antiques, a telescope, cobbler’s shoe tree, antique dynamite detonation box, and lots of very old clothes. I had several bags of trash to take to the landfill!
Three boxes of dishes
Empty paint cans which I have no idea why they were kept.
Dynamite detonator box
I have no idea what this was but it was under the stairs!
Cobbler’s shoe tree
Boxes and boxes of old receipts
Telescope given to them by hubby’s grandmother.
And lots of trash!!!
Now it’s cleaned out, scrubbed and refreshed with only the telescope taking up residence. I will probably store our window fans in the nice space after summer heating is over. I had hubby cut me some cedar blocks from a fallen tree to place in the space to keep it from smelling like an old house and the beautiful wooden planks on the wall show up nicely now.
One more bucket list item marked off!!
countrygirl-lifeonthefarm 
Love your treasures! Could the piece you don’t know what is…hold wood? Probably not, just thought it might. lol. Hard to tell from pic. 😃
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You are exactly right!! We had one here used for that purpose when we moved in but graduated to a bigger rack so we could have more wood next to the stove when the snows were heavier! At first I thought it may have been used in the hearth to hold the wood.
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It’s always nice to get something checked off the list. A small improvement can make a big impact. How fun to find some treasures. I bet the farm receipts were interesting to look through. I love dishes. That find would be a treasure in my book.
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Never fails and then I wonder “why didn’t I do this sooner?” 🙂
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Wow, that was a lot of stuff in there, Rita. You’ve almost inspired me to follow your good example. Can you report at the end of September, when inspiration is more likely to translate into action?! 😉
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I’ll just send you a little nudge when you least expect it!!! 🙂
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Amazing how good that feels isn’t it! I’ve been doing the same thing in a spare bedroom we have that has collected all manner of “stuff”. I just take one little thing at a time (a bin, a shelf, a corner) and eventually the whole thing will be done. Then I am going to have new flooring put in and a new paint job and it will become my new sewing room. 🙂
You found a lot of interesting things in that closet.
Ginny
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Nice! Feels good, doesn’t it? 🙂
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Feels fabulous!
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Glad it’s cleaned out. I bet it was neat to see some of those things!!
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