HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – What started as a casual hobby when Barabara Lillis and her husband were first married has led to Lillis’s basement walls being covered in jigsaw puzzles.

“When I did a puzzle I couldn’t stand to take it apart,” said Lillis.

So Lillis doesn’t take them apart. She uses Mod Podge to glue her finished puzzles together and hangs them up in her basement.

“I actually should have bought some stock in Mod Podge because I use a lot of glue,” Lillis said. “I buy it in a five-gallon container.”

Lillis’s collection began when she did a puzzle that featured a collection of election buttons. Lillis decided she couldn’t bear to take that puzzle apart and decided to glue it together. Then she finished an Easter eggs puzzle that she deemed too pretty to destroy as well.

“I started with like two or three puzzles and then it just continued and then I needed a place to put them so I started hanging them on the basement walls,” Lillis said.

Lillis first hung her puzzles in her and her late husband’s old house. They stayed in that home for 28 years and between teaching preschool and raising her daughter, Lillis accumulated 80 puzzles. She and her husband had to move to a new house after her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and Lillis carefully transported all 80 with her, eventually hanging them in her new basement.

Lillis’s personal puzzle display continued to grow and now 314 puzzles grace her basement walls and even her steps. Her collection continues growing as Lillis still passionately puzzles, completing about 85 per year.

Lillis’s collection mostly consists of 1,000-piece puzzles, but she does have some smaller ones. Those she doesn’t include in her count. If Lillis counts them she said her number goes up to 400 puzzles.

“They make me think,” Lillis said. ” I just try to do things to keep my mind occupied because I enjoy having the TV on all day, but I don’t want to just sit and watch it. I want to do things that keep my brain active.”

Lillis also completes other types of puzzles, playing six rounds of solitary every morning and playing sudoku throughout the day, but jigsaw puzzles are her favorite. She says she has started to notice patterns with puzzles, finding that certain puzzles are easier to do when the pieces are sorted by color, others by shape and some require a completely different approach.

Lillis does many different types of jigsaws but prefers ones based on collections, such as an accumulation of sewing items.

“I like it if they’re very colorful,” Lillis said. “I also like to do buildings, things that have a lot of color to them.”

Lillis also enjoys themed puzzles such as the one she has hung up based on the show “Friends” and others centered around decades like the 1980s and 1990s.

Lillis considers White Mountain puzzles and Ravensburger puzzles to be the best as far as quality. Her collection started with a lot of Charles Wysocki puzzles, which she tried to keep in one location in her basement.

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“I had a lot of Charles Wysocki so I try to keep them in one area and then I was just putting them up,” Lillis said. “I never thought I was going to fill the whole basement. I was just putting them haphazardly anywhere, wherever there was space.”

Her puzzles are now mostly hung as a mosaic with no categorization, however she does have a holiday corner. Lillis stores her Christmas decorations in that corner and has dedicated the walls above the boxes as a holiday puzzle gallery.

Lillis does laps in her basement to stay active, ten laps around equates to a mile, and the somewhat sporadic arrangement of the puzzles makes for an interesting scenery for her.

Lillis doesn’t complete her puzzles in the basement however as it is too cold. But she also can’t sit for long periods in a regular chair due to having cancer in 1974 in one of her legs. She has found a way to keep her leg elevated, per doctor’s orders, and continue her hobby. She has a sofa that elevates her leg like a recliner and she stabilizes a board in her lap to put her puzzles together on.

As for where she gets her puzzles, Lillis mostly relies on thrift stores such as Goodwill, however she does order some off Amazon when she is in the mood for a specific puzzle. Her sister-in-law and brother-in-law also gift her puzzles from a used puzzle vendor that is at their church bazaar every year.

Lillis has two puzzles glued and waiting to hang up, one she is working on and about ten in her queue at the moment. If she runs out of room in her basement, Lillis said she might have to start just taking photos of her completed puzzles, but for now she’s going to continue squeezing them on the walls.

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