Ah, how wonderful it is to have a tidy uncluttered clean home.
We had company last weekend, so I used it as a good excuse to do a deep clean of our house ahead of time. How oddly exhilarating a day of good hard cleaning is! Since then I've been tidying up twice a day, as I know that I do much better when I keep on top of things rather than end up overwhelmed and avoiding the mess after falling behind.
I did a bit of a mini-clean this weekend again,
sweeping,
mopping,
vacuuming,
ironing,
doing laundry,
washing diapers,
handwashing and relanolizing the wool diaper covers,
cooking,
tidying,
marking (I teach an online course),
baking (the best banana bread ever, according to my husband),
before finally putting my son to bed and, after one last quick kid-free tidy, relaxing for the evening.
It's so much more peaceful to spend the day in a tidy house (or, even better, outside).
My biggest difficulty as far as cleaning and decluttering goes is throwing stuff away. I'm terrible at it. Firmly against it, actually. After all, you never know when that desk calculator with the dead batteries and broken pen might come in handy - and, in any case, it was a gift. And that sweater you've never worn - it is really quite pretty and one day you might want to wear it. And all those empty containers - well, containers can be useful for so many things, right? Countless things! You can't throw them away. And that old tennis ball that doesn't bounce anymore - it's still a ball. You can, you know, roll it around or something.
It would seem I have issues.
BUT last week I forced myself to let ago of a few things (including the above-mentioned broken desk calculator and flat tennis ball). My husband is much better at this than I am. A little too good, I thought, as I pulled a Christmas card from his Oma out of the trashcan. Honestly! Not a sentimental bone in his body.
Now, perhaps someone could tell me - what do I do with all these rescued greeting cards??
I have the opposite problem - I love throwing things away! It's so satisfying to throw away useless clutter. Of course, not all things are useless. For cards, I keep the special ones in a small box. I hate throwing cards away!
ReplyDeletemy daughter just jokes that my "collections" will bring in more at the estate sale after i'm gone. though she's great at not collecting and saving "stuff", i struggle with it. my husband also tosses and gets rid of things that i'm sure i may use at some point and just in case shouldn't we keep it? as for old greeting cards....isn't there someway to decoupage them or something?
ReplyDeleteJacob is so handsome! I love his smile and blue eyes! You are a blessed woman!
ReplyDeleteI'm just like you in terms of cleaning and keeping things too. It's ironic that my husband is like yours too. I can't tell you how many cards I've rescued from the trash.
ReplyDeleteA while ago I saw a creative idea of Christmas cards, you can turn them into ornaments for your tree. You cut them and fold them in different ways to make unique ornaments. I think there was also a way to make them where you could still read the message inside. Have I ever done this? No, but I have shoe box full of cards waiting to be transformed into ornaments. LOL, maybe one day.
I have a friend who took all her old, favorite Christmas cards and tied them onto a ribbon. Now she uses it as a garland for their Christmas tree each year. It really is beautiful!
ReplyDeleteI've seen people who buy cardstock and then cut the front of the card off of the part that's already written in and re-gift the card...that's clever. or else I just hand it to my daughter and say "here, this came for you." and let her play with it until it is ready for the recycling bin...
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