Meredith Mansfield, Author

I won’t be posting tomorrow, so here’s Wednesday’s post a little early.

I’m convinced that every house, or at least every old house has a that room. It’s the room where you put everything when you don’t know where else to put it.

In this house, it’s the back bedroom. The room my great grandfather died in. (Yes, the house has been in the family that long.) After that, it was my brother’s room. My brother who is constitutionally incapable of putting anything up. It was a guest room for a while, but it required a week’s advance notice to clear it out and make it habitable. When Furby, Libby, Inky, Peso, and Buttons were kittens, I used to put them in there at night, so they wouldn’t keep the house awake running up and down the halls. (Been there, done that with a previous litter of kittens–Dart, Chris, Toby, and Falstaff.) More recently, I’ve turned it into a sort of walk-in closet–or tried to.

I have, at times, considered the possibility that there’s some kind of curse on that room. I swear, I can put things up in there and come back later to find half the floor covered with stuff and the shelves all in a jumble. I’ve threatened to burn sage to banish the evil spirits or poltergeist or whatever, but well, it’s that room and I’m afraid I’d start a fire.

This all comes up now because I’m finally getting the last of the Christmas decorations put up. I use the closet in that room for some of the Christmas stuff. And I can’t get all the boxes back onto the shelves they came down from. Why not? I swear I didn’t add anything this year. In fact, I took some things that I hadn’t used in a while outside to store in the garage.

I guess it’s just part of the mystery of that room. There’s probably a story idea in there somewhere.