We have two bathroom closets, and both are in pretty bad shape. I tackled the downstairs one first, because I’m still a little overwhelmed by the thought of taking on the upstairs bathroom.

There’s a whole lot of nothing in this closet, but it still turned out to be slower work than I had expected. There were a lot of old vitamins and supplements piled up in there–some of it stuff I’d never even heard of. Also we have way too many towels stowed here, many of which we have designated “spill rags” since they are so tattered. I also found remnants of baby-days tucked in the faraway reaches–a pair of swim diapers, infant-sized sunglasses–that sort of thing.

I managed to pull together two full trash bags–one for the landfill, and one for donation. Not a bad haul for one small closet!

But here is something unusual–in all of that unnecessary clutter, I actually found two things that I had forgotten about entirely, which had somehow managed to work their way into deep storage in this closet. The first was a small bracelet that I got for my daughter several years back on a trip to China. At the time she was too young to wear it so we hid it away–apparently a bit too well. The other find was a small, silver turtle that my brother had given me probably 25 or 30 years ago. Its shell opens on a hinge. I always thought of it as a special little trinket.

The bracelet is now upstairs with the rest of my daughter’s modest collection of jewelry, and the silver turtle now sits on my dresser. I’m happy to have unearthed both.

The rest of the stuff–not exactly what I would call treasure!