Living Dangerously

I never thought I would be taking my life in my own hands while cleaning out a storage unit. My good friend Jannette came along to help me load everything into the box truck. The unit we cleaned out was not a large one, but the contents were stacked up to the ceiling. It looked like one of those Jenga puzzles; pull out the wrong thing and everything comes crashing down!

We managed to get some of the boxes and loose items from the front of the unit without too much trouble, but at the back of the unit, the boxes were stacked precariously, and too high for us to reach. I knew I should have brought the stepladder, but I didn't. So I climbed up on top of a piece of furniture turned on its side and took a look to decide which box had to come down first. It didn't seem to matter; we knew we were going to have an avalanche. So I grabbed a box, turned to hand it to Jannette, who grabbed it from my clutches just in time to jump away from the two boxes underneath it as they fell past me. I ducked, she jumped back, and fortunately neither one of us got hurt, although we did have some fatalities: a blender and some Looney Tunes glassware.

It was a small loss, though, compared to some of the goodies we found! Underneath the huge stack of boxes was a large-screen TV, an antique Singer sewing machine in a cabinet, another Singer in a portable case (one dates to 1909 and the other to 1873), a Kirby vacuum cleaner and all the attachments, a cute little vintage record cabinet, and a console stereo.

I also found lots of gorgeous jewelry. There are several lovely cocktail rings, necklaces, earrings, and a loose diamond (I hope) solitaire in a little plastic case. We found lots of nice ladies' sweaters and jeans, infant and toddler toys, books (most of them are romance novels), a ton of tuppperware (some of it new!), Christmas decorations, new wine glasses (not broken!), a depression glass oil lamp, a swag lamp that looks like a bunch of grapes (delightfully tacky!), enough yarn to knit a sweater for everyone in the neighborhood, craft and sewing supplies, kitchenware, a collection of ceramic unicorns, a food steamer, casserole dishes, kitchen utensils......plus lots of odds and ends. Not bad for a $100 investment!