I wish I was about to impart some amazing bit of information, like I know the best places for Friday night karaoke, or I’ve pinpointed the greatest hiking trails for different seasons of the year. But no, I’m referring to hot spots around my home.

Everyone has those places (at least I hope so or I need to rethink my whole life) in their house that they really need to do something about because it really annoys them on a regular basis, but keep putting off. I rarely feel up to dealing with such issues for the very reason they are even a problem – what do I do with ____ (fill in the blank)?

I used to have bigger hot spots in my house. We had an enclosed patio for a number of years; it was here when we moved in. It wasn’t a nice, usable structure in the sense of entertaining or anything like that. I do have a couple pictures of people balancing their plates on their laps during a party in it; our house is rather small and they had to bleed out somewhere. After many years it became a landing place for items we didn’t know where to put or rather we didn’t want to deal with. Stick it on the patio; out of sight, out of mind and all.

When we decided to take it down and make a nice, covered seating area, we were forced to deal with all the stuff. It was amazing how easy it was just to toss it and I was duly embarrassed for not having disposed of it to begin with. I’m not a person who believes in storage; if I don’t use it within a year, I don’t need it.

Though the patio is a nice seating place now, it often becomes a catch-all, especially in the winter months when we aren’t using it. I like to do a spring cleaning to make it usable before summer, but because of the big reorganization we recently did in our home, it has been only moderately usable for several weeks.

It’s just one of the places I’ve been irritated with but I’ve lacked the motivation to do anything about. It’s not the only hot spot either; the towel shelf at the end of the hall comes to mind. Also the area of the kitchen counter right in front of the TV is a never-ending pile of trinkets, as well as the top of the dryer – why can’t they just reach up and put it back on the shelf?

The biggest eyesore we’ve had for the longest time is the lean-to attached to my husband’s shop. It doesn’t have a door on it and it’s been falling apart for some time, much to my dismay as I sit on the back patio staring at it. It’s not even the lame structure, it’s having the junk (treasure to my husband) staring back at me.

So this weekend my husband decided to tear it down and rebuild it. While he was doing that and getting further into the project than he had intended (compliments of our neighbor who actually knows how to build stuff correctly), I decided to reclaim my patio; might as well enjoy it these last few weeks of summer.

As I sit on my patio every morning enjoying my coffee, I’ll have one less hot spot to ruminate over. And it will be nice to be looking at a shed door instead of the junk, uh treasures.

However, now I have a backyard full of rotting lumber. I wonder how long that spot will take to cool off?

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.”