Sniff Sniff

I think I'm allergic to stink bugs.  No, seriously, hear me out. 

Saturday I sneezed my way through cleaning out the closet room while the guys were away hunting.  Sneezing to the point that by Saturday evening head was pounding from sneezing so much.

Wait, let me back up.

Last fall we turned our second bedroom into a walk-in closet room.  This is what it looked like before (minus a huge pile of stuff I already removed):

 
Carpet, big bulky wardrobe closets, a clunky dresser, and metal shelves.

This what it looked like after:

 

I never got a photo of the room completed with the new trim, new door, and new paint before I moved all the stuff back into the room.  We removed the dresser and wardrobes and filled the room with shelves. Here's a picture of them in the living room before we moved them into the closet room.

 

 

They are nice shelves.  Some long hanging places, some short hanging places, and some shelves.  
At this point all over stuffed. Just like this photo, except not in the living room. 

My goal was to get away from doing the summer/winter switch of putting clothes away in tubs and boxes at the end of a season and getting out the clothes for the next season. And it worked. I donated many, many bags of clothes, organized, and now I no longer have to do the switch.

Except....now the closet room has also become the junk/storage room.  Papers that need filed, boxes and tubs of seasonal decorations.  Things I don't know what to do with. Along with all of the clean clothes that need hung or folded.  Then when company is coming, everything that is clutter in the rest of the house gets thrown in the room and the door closed. 

It's become a mess.  Guilty.  Nobody to blame but myself. 

THEN to add insult to injury, the stink bugs invaded this room.  As with the rest of the house, the windows are old and do not seal tight so these little buggers have found their way in.  Worse than just being in the room, they have weaseled their way into the folded clothes on the shelves. 

I grabbed a sweatshirt the other day and when I unfolded it, there were 20+ stink bugs curled up inside the folds of the sleeves and hood.  Gag, gag, gag, gag.  It wasn't just one sweatshirt that had a colony.  The entire top row of clothes on every shelf, between all the hanging garments, and behind all the shoe boxes were stink bugs.  Hiding.  Waiting to stink me when I least expected it.  (Oh they are that tricky.)

So with the guys away for the day, I jumped head first into cleaning out this room. 

Vacuuming up every stink bug on the windows.  Sneeze.  Vacuuming every stink bug on the clothes.  Sneeze.  Vacuuming up every stink bug on the floor.  Sneeze. 

Then last night after the gym, we headed home to the Cat Ranch.  Walt Kowalski wanted to finish the floor in the entrance and I wanted to work in the closet room some more.  Sneeze. Sneeze. Sneeze. Sneeze. Sneeze. 

I sneezed so many times Walt Kowalski got tired of blessing me.  I was very blessed last night.  I almost had to change my pants.  (It's a girl thing.)

But when I left the closet room, where the majority of the stink bugs were hiding, I stopped sneezing.  When I went back into the room, I started sneezing almost instantly.

Hmmmmm. 
This morning I went into the closet room and sneezed again. 

Coincidence?  Maybe. 
Maybe I am allergic to stink bugs. 

Maybe I'm just getting a cold.  Either way I'm going to keep a change of pants and lots of tissues close by when I finish cleaning that room.  I also think I know which windows are going to be replaced first.