If You Give a Mouse a Cookie OR If You Give a Mom an Idea

Did you ever read the picture books by Laura Numeroff, the chain-of-events stories where one thing always leads to another (If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and If You Give a Moose a Muffin and other similar titles)? I have chuckled over these while reading them to my children.

Well, I kind of lived one of those stories as I was tidying up my home for the holidays.

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I decided to remove an iron baskethook that had hung in my dining room for as long as I can remember. (Don’t things just kind of blend into the background if you leave them in the same place for too long? And then you don’t even see them anymore?)

I climbed onto a Windsor chair so that I could reach the basket hook.

The seat of said Windsor chair split in two! (I have to insert here that it was in no way related to the weight of the climber. It was definitely because the chair was purchased at a scratch-and-dent sale years ago...and already had a hairline crack in the seat...and should not have been used as a step ladder. That was definitely the reason. Ahem.)

I moved a chair from the living room into the dining room so that there would be enough seats at the table for our Christmas brunch guests.

The proverbial light bulb flashed in my head as I decided that Ron could certainly repair the broken chair well enough to use as a (mostly) decorative piece for my front porch.

I hauled the broken chair out to my front porch and placed a basket on the seat to hide the crack.

The white wicker rocker that had formerly graced the front porch was suddenly homeless.

I instantly decided that I would post an offer on Freecycle so that I would not have a cluttered porch when my holiday guests arrived. (I wavered briefly when Bekah said that she remembered me rocking her in this chair, but quickly reminded myself that I have lots and lots of sentimental things around my house and that this is the child who wants to keep everything. I went inside and posted away.)

I spent the next hour responding to all the people who wanted the rocker, including my friend who promised to pick it up the following morning.

I dragged the rocker through my house (couldn't leave two chairs that were obviously not compatible sitting side by side) because there was snow covering the ground.

Rocker on the back deck now, I returned inside to vacuum all the white paint flecks that marked the path from the front door to the back door.

The next morning, the new owner of the wicker rocking chair loaded it into her minivan and drove away, leaving me with a spruced up dining room, living room, and front porch...and a happy ending to our story.

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Conclusion: If you don't have time for a chain-of-events story to interrupt your holiday preparations, leave your iron basket hook in place until the new year.