At the risk of pointing out the obvious: resident dog + foster dog = twice as many dogs as we had before.

And at Casa Fosterfamily, clutter is always lurking in a dark corner, waiting for us to stop paying attention so it can leap out into the open and take over everything. In its presence, we are so weak. It’s much easier to turn a blind eye and just bake a pan of brownies than it is to deal with the evil clutter monster. But, we try to combat it in small ways whenever we can.

Over the weekend, Lollie helped get the Dog Walk Station under control. We have this nifty vintage mail sorter by our side door, and when Chick was our one and only we used it to store dog walk related things: his leash, a spare key, poop bags, sunglasses, and gloves. With two dogs, though, it was getting a little unwieldy. Leashes, harnesses, collars, hats, and gloves were hung all over the poor thing, like some sort of ill-conceived, industrial holiday decoration.

So Lollie the brainiac helped us come up with a simple solution to keep things tidy. We went to a home restore and found some vintage brass cup hooks, took some simple measurements, and fastened them to the underside of our mail sorter.

Here is Lollie conceptualizing the project . . .

And figuring out the specs . . .

Just a few minutes later, voila! A two-dog solution! Nothing fancy, but it’s these little things that keep us sane while sharing our home with an extra dog.