Spring Cleaning

The weather has been unseasonably warm this month. Every time the news comes on the meteorologist reminds us about how we're experiencing weather forty degrees warmer than the average for this time of year. Whenever I look at facebook I see my friends sharing about all the ambitious spring projects they've taken on - painting the house, clearing out flowerbeds, and spring cleaning. I'm not a gardener or a painter, so I decided to work on things inside the house.

Yesterday I had one of those increasingly rare days when I didn't have to go anywhere -- until after supper, when I had band practice. My younger daughter is coming to stay with us for a little while between apartments, so I thought I'd start by clearing out her bedroom, which has been used as a storage room for my scrapbooking stuff and whatever else I don't know what to do with. I made some progress with that. Two or three large boxes and she'll have a room she can move around in.

I also found a home for two large boxes of books. My local library has a used book sale twice a year and takes donations. They got some old textbooks (my kids don't seem to get into re-selling their texts) and some books I've read but didn't particularly enjoy. And then a website called Freecycle helped me get rid of a whole bunch of craft supplies.

So that's a small dent on the clutter in my house. Looking at my calendar, the next unscheduled day is April 7, unless something comes up before then. If I want to get things accomplished then I'll have to do it in small chunks, like I do with my writing, music, scrapbooking, and sewing. I'll have to schedule it, and make it a priority. Last year I made a goal to dedicate at least one hour a day to "organizing" something. Maybe I'd better reinstate that. Or maybe my goal could be to get rid of at least one box or bag per day.

That would make my kids happy, I suppose. If I continue to purge, by the end of the summer I should a lot more room in here.
After cleaning out the bedroom and boxing up stuff in the basement for my daughter's garage sale, I sat down with my manuscript and started purging words. Words, phrases, and entire paragraphs were deleted. I'm hoping the streamlined version will be stronger and better than the previous version. If it's good for the house, it's good for the book too, right?

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I actually managed to get in some sewing this week. I suppose it was guilt after writing about my fabric obsession. If you haven't read about it, I wrote a guest post for the Astraea Press blog. Anyway, I made myself an infinity scarf like the one my daughter modeled (and took with her!) a few weeks ago. Since it's identical to that one, I'll just direct you to the picture of her wearing it.