Originally Posted by marshamarriott

AnngelAnne and Roma, Had a good laugh over this! We live in the boonies in western NY. Our old farm house IS that shed. We have a fat pair of squirrels living upstairs, a pair of young Raccoon living between the upstairs floor and downstairs ceiling (they like to play on the late afternoon and are used to us yelling at them and rapping the broom handle on the ceiling - that gets them scrambling for a corner but they soon return to playing.) We have seen them on the roof. Rich didn't believe me at first, but then he saw them. Also numerous mice (now dying in the walls), spiders everywhere.

I haven't been able to go upstairs very much the past year because of knee replacement, but will get there soon. I dread looking into the boxes and bags that hold my oldest stash and my mother's. They haven't been opened since our five children have left the nest. Now the one storage closet we have upstairs is probably full of shredded boxes, shredded bags and shredded fabrics. I am good at salvage, so probably rescue something. I wish I knew how to "evict" the residents up there. Raccoons seem to keep to the walls and under-floor areas, but the squirrels seem to have free reign of the 2 bedrooms and door-less storage area. If I accidently leave the stairway door open, they escape, then all outside doors need to be opened then chase them to one of the doors. They soon return.

Some day soon I will dare to attack that closet and salvage the better and throw the rest, including boxes full of kid's leftover. When they left they got boxes of their leavings. They sorted the boxes, took what they wanted, then returned the boxes nearly full. I should have thrown them at the time! Even text books left behind.

Sorry this is so long, but I couldn't resist. My directions to truck drivers who hadn't been to the farm before was "If you are convinced you are lost, keep going - you are almost there"!

Now I have to rummage in my down-stairs stash for fabrics for this mystery in the 4x size. If I find 13 - 1 yard length pieces I will probably have enough and the remainder will just go into a scrap quilt.