I have been living a lie. I present myself as an organized person. I have a label maker, and I’m not afraid to use it. I am known among my friends for my absolute joy in organizing, labeling and decluttering. Donate or toss things we don’t need or use? Cull extra items to focus only on what we use and love? Get rid of excess and keep things clear? Take pride in having empty cabinets and closets? Sign me up!
Then Mr. Wonderful decided it was finally time to get serious about insulating some of the attic storage cubby holes and my entire façade as an organized person crumbled. He’s been talking about insulating under the roof for years, but I just thought that was like scaling the Himalayas — and equally as likely to happen.
We have a three-story house. It was built over a century ago by upper-middle-class people back when folks of that sort could afford hired help. Accordingly, our home came with a fancy front staircase and a second stairway from the kitchen. This type of secondary access is generally referred to as a “servant stair.” It was meant to allow maids and such to scurry up and down without using the fancy front staircase. Out of sight, out of mind until it came time to dust, I suppose.
My long-running joke has been that in 30 years here I have yet to find a servant anywhere! In our finished third floor — where servants presumably once stayed — there are side cubbies with little doors that lead to low, vast areas out under the eaves? I phrase that as a question because, to be honest, I don’t really know. What goes on behind those doors is none of my business. We shoved stuff in there on moving day in 1996 and never looked back. I am not kidding. They just don’t exist.
I raised two now-adult children in this house from birth to the day. They moved out into their own places. Children tend to know their own childhood homes almost better than the adults do because they have played and explored every inch. Yet GirlWonder exclaimed in actual wonder the other day, “I didn’t even realize those went that deep?” Even the curious children that grew up here and know every inch of this property and this house had left that area entirely unexplored.
Mr. Wonderful got on the insulation bandwagon when home heating oil surged to almost $6 per gallon. This house will go through many gallons. She’s a big girl. Each winter Mr. Wonderful looks up at the roof and sees the snow melt over those uninsulated storage areas and it drives an icy cold jolt through his heart and his wallet. This explains why on a bright sunny day when I was innocently enjoying my coffee, he decided that today was the day. He was going to clean out the cubbies.
He opened the first one with a flashlight in hand. At a glance, it didn’t look terrible. Apparently I had stored things in plastic totes, a.k.a. “clutter coffins.” Everything our wonderful friends and family members had carried up three flights on moving day to be shoved away unused for three decades was well protected.
A thick layer of dust covered everything. He kept crawling in and out, dragging out things I have no memory of owning. What the heck were we thinking when we carefully packed away old board games and … empty boxes. Thank goodness we saved that circa 1994 Gateway computer packaging.
We had not needed any of this for more than half our lives. We were tossing things out the third-floor window into a dump trailer parked below. The dust was billowing up in great clouds as he worked his way to the very back of the space where the lost remnants of former residents’ lives had, literally, fallen through the cracks. Old photos, a crushed hat, a handwritten letter, and an antique apple-picking basket. Okay, that last one is kind of cool. Mr. Wonderful kept pulling out dusty old board games and opening them up like he’s never seen Jumanji. Are you trying to get kidnapped into another dimension Sir, because THAT is exactly how you get kidnapped into another dimension? I kept worrying he was going to stir up some ancient disease dust and give us all the 1918 Spanish influenza or something.
Finally, he reached the back wall and dragged out an ancient battery. He crawled back in to report that it seemed to be rigged to some sort of wiring to a long-ago broken bell system. Mystery Solved! That’s why I haven’t been able to find a servant around here all these years. Obviously, the bell battery was broken.
