October 18, 1998

Big day today. We decided that the back porch was getting too crowded and messy and decided to build some shelves for my soapin' stuff. YAY! I was getting kind of sick of piling soaps on top of old dusty cardboard boxes and having the cats crawl over them trying to hop in the window and stuff.

First thing we did was take measurements. We decided we wanted one big long "countertop" shelf under the west windows and along the wall, and shorter shelves on each side of the west windows. So we ended up with one 9' length for under the windows, with 18" lengths on the south side of the windows and 36" lengths on the north side of the windows. Once we figured out how long we wanted the shelves to be, we figured out how many brackets we needed to support the shelves. We figured on one 9' length, 4 18" lengths, and 3 36" lengths, with 27 brackets.

Then it was time to hit Menards!

We made it out to Menards. The pressboard shelving (with a nice white laminate coating) was on sale -- plus I think we got an extra bargain because she entered the item number wrong, we figured later -- for $6 per 12' length. We got 3 12' lengths due to the sizes we wanted to cut. We had them cut into 6' lengths at the store so we could fit them into the car. We also got wood screws and a new Black and Decker cordless drill/screwdriver (DB LOVES powertools...and so do I because I'm a big wimp!). Last but not least, we got brackets. They were about $.65 each, but they didn't have as many as we needed, so we only got 20. No biggie; we only skimped a little bit on the 9' shelf. We got all the shelves up by a little after sundown, and I got all my soapin' stuff moved in to its new digs!

*doing the happy organization and new shelves dance*

Once we had all the shelves up, I decided to cut up my Lavender Glop soap and put it up to dry...I got 18 bars cut and they were kind of squishy (probably due to all the extra water that got incorporated along with the lye), but they're on the top shelf so they should get lots of air and not too much cat fur. :)