Tired and Sore

Yesterday, I decided to go into the lion’s den and beard the lion. I had to do a follow up on my consolidation of papers and items at the Chestnut Ridge Historical Society in Stahlstown, Pennsylvania. Saturday, I took my postcards to loan, to review and for possible display in one of their showcases. After Liz the volunteer and I looked at the cards, she went back to filing papers and as I looked around the display area room, I began to see there was a way to enlarge the ability to hide shelves of reference binders and to provide more cases to share their historic artifacts. So, Saturday I began the task of sorting and stacking.

I wasn’t too sure how my consolidating of the room’s contents would be received, so I went in Wednesday morning to face the music and to see if my ideas for further repositioning of shelves, filing cabinets, and display cases would be acceptable. After sharing my ideas and explaining the placement and reasons, the officers agreed with me.

Fortunately, and unfortunately they saw the wisdom of my suggestions and I started to work, and work it was. Moving three display cases was the first task. That made room to place shelves of notebooks and binders out of sight and yet allow easy access for volunteers. Next, was to move those shelves with binders into the open space now open behind the cases. Each cleared space had to be swept clean from the ancient dust and debris that had accumulated beneath them.

Into the area vacated by the shelves of binders, we moved the filing cabinet. It was a single unit, three drawers wide and three drawers wide. Each heavy drawer had to be removed before we could move the weighty frame. Once it was pushed and pulled into place, I could replace the drawers; not as easy task.

Into the space that once held the filing cabinet, we could move another display case that was almost hidden due to lack of space. Now, there was room to stack and store boxes of supplies, books, ledgers, and artifacts out of sight of the public and yet close at hand when needed.

An item we were able to pull out and put on display was the old Kregar post office teller window and mail cubicles. It had been hidden for years. All in all, it was a great feeling to see so much accomplished and I am less sore than I thought I’d be. It will take awhile for everyone to acclimate themselves to the new positioning of things, but the extra room was definitely needed.