Cleaning Update

Just thought I'd give an update to our cleaning spree. (I know it bores most to tears, but I do go back and read through the blog on occasion, and it's nice to see the reminders.

This past week we started school up again, so the big cleaning came to a halt. I putzed in the kitchen, got the cupboards all organized, but the kitchen remained messy because it was the landing spot for stuff.

Saturday Bob, Thomas and I loaded up our donations for Salvation Army. They filled the van. Off we went, carrying boxes and bags and stuff to them. I asked the nice lady how the new legislation was going to effect them. She said she had just heard about it on Wednesday, and they were going to operate as always until someone told them differently. I was surprised that I had heard about it a couple weeks ago on various homeschool message boards. I was slightly afraid some of our donations would be turned down. They weren't.

We drove home, and loaded 30 grocery bags overflowing with books. We drove to the library and Bob and I each took two bags in. (They were heavy!) The nice librarian thanked us, and we informed her this was the tip of the iceberg. We filled three of their carts, plus overflowed to the floor. We gave them hundreds of books.

I was glad to learn that they actually go through each book and will keep the good ones for their collection. There are some I bet they do keep! I'm sure they'll be thrilled (not!) to find many of their old books, that I had purchased at their sale, made their way back to them.

We drove to the Animal Shelter and donated one last crate we found.

Today we took down the Christmas decorations. I spent about three hours cleaning the living room, and it wasn't even that dirty. I bought myself a new vacuum cleaner, a Kenmore Progressive Upright with Inteli-clean System It is not a bagless. I will never own a bagless vacuum again! I was very tired of dumping the canister all the time, to be honest. The dust made me sneeze. I wanted something less dirty.


This is by far the best vacuum I have ever owned. (Don't laugh, vacuums are a hobby of mine.) There are green, amber and red lights on the vacuum. Green means clean, and amber and red mean dirty. Wow, I vacuumed and vacuumed and vacuumed. Took forever to go from red to green. To look at the carpet, you wouldn't think it was that dirty. Apparently it was, as we have filled the bag twice. I think it just does a really good job at getting deep-down. I moved all the furniture, and that room is clean.

I then re-arranged the furniture. I was so happy with the way I placed things. Thomas came into the room and gave me a WOW! It looked really good.

I then went to do laundry and clean the basement. When I came upstairs, what did I find? My husband had taken it upon himself to put the furniture back the way it had been previous to Christmas. I looked at him in utter disbelief. He likes it better this way. I got snappy with him, when I shouldn't have. But darn it all, it made me mad.

Oh well.

I am still not quite done. I have to go through all the tubs that are now empty and decide what to do with them. I have to re-arrange the laundry room, as we did put some more things in there for storage. (Christmas stuff, mostly, and Bob put it there which means, of course, I didn't like where he put it.)

I'd say another two days tweaking things and I'll call 'er good.

What I have learned with all of this is that this was very good for my soul. I think it was a part of my healing process, a major part. Finally, something I can control: making order out of chaos. Not that it was complete chaos, because it wasn't: I was just ready to purge, quit holding on to stuff, and get things really super clean.

I have to pay bills (wow, I'm really late!) and get the taxes started this week. School is pretty well organized, but I do need to spend an hour or two organizing for the rest of the year.

This weekend I should be ready to hunker down and finish scanning the family photos for my siblings.

November and December of last year I was pretty depressed. It was gettng bad. We did school, but for me, it was just going through the motions. I don't remember a whole lot of what went on, I just kept trying to be optomistic and pretending I was okay even though on the inside I was screaming/crying. I bought myself a light box for the seasonal depression that I get every year. I had that, plus grief-depression. Within a week of sitting under that light box, I felt like a new person. It was amazing how fast it worked. I wasn't completely up to par, but I was so much better! I think that light box, plus Bob's offer to help, was what enabled me to have the energy to do the big clean-out.

So what a great start to the new year. I feel better, even though I'm aware that February, my bad month historically, is coming up on me. My house is clean. My laundry is caught up. School is back in session. Mom's taxi-service is operating again, we're going, we're scheduling get-togethers, and we are (I am) coming back to life.

That's a good thing, because I deserve it!