Busy Bee

I have been a very busy bee today and tonight. I have been doing things that needed to be done for months! Like cleaning clutter piles. Three very heavy brown bags have gone to the paper recycling bin. One to go, but I will wait til it is light out in the morning. Raccoons like to pop up and I don't like that very much.

I am amazed at the amounts of junk that come to our house. I am sure yours as well! I threw away so much crap. I try to throw out the junk mail before it comes into the house. But I have had piles of junk mail and other paperwork that needed to be filed just piling up. When that pile got to high, I started a new one...It is very cleansing to do this...I cannot remember the last time I saw the end of my kitchen counter.

We gave our expresso maker to my stepdaughter's husband to use in his office and I thought how nice it would be to have the extra counter space. Boy, that was a joke! I just filled it with more piles....

I put things where they actually belong too. Not just dumping them into my clean garage. Well semi-clean. I need to get to a few things that are misplaced, put away and I don't ever want to clean it out again! That took two solid days. I like walking thru it when it is clean and not in a path that we made by pushing everything to the side. And I like to see the top of my pool table without any clothes on it!

I did little things like voting absentee and it is ready to mail. I registered Katharine's computer with the added warranty that was purchased when she got it on July 30th!!! That didn't take long. But it was just another thing to do.

A friend gave me a bouquet of lavender that she got for me near Monterey this past summer. She said when she got it, the bouquet was very purple. It is may be less purple, but it is beautiful, very fragrant and my favorite smell. I got it three days ago and just put it into a vase tonight. Zoe took the pieces that fell onto the table for her room. Not too much, just enough to make her room smell like lavender.

It is the little things that take up so much time. Paying bills, having the correct tool to repair the towel holder that fell down again, reading emails from troops that want to do booth sales, and actually saving the email, putting it in a file and writing the information in a notebook I have. Quickly perusing magazines and tossing them or adding them to the basket for future reading! Returning phone calls. Adding times and events to my calendar. Finding out that we are out of snacks again, and I just went to the store yesterday. Which means I will have to go tomorrow for lunches on Wednesday. I might order online later tonight though. It is very convenient. If they don't screw up the order, that is. All easy enough stuff to do, just time consuming.

But what a difference. When the kitchen looks good and is uncluttered, it makes me what to spend more time in there and actually enjoy cooking. I detest thinking about what to prepare for dinner nightly. It is not easy to prepare something all four of us like. In which case, I add something for whomever it is that doesn't like what I am making that night. I am a short order cook basically. Even breakfasts are short order. Eggs over easy, scrambled, omelets, poached. Pancakes usually do pretty well. On school mornings, it is cereal, fruit, bagel or a muffin. Something fast. The girls have to be to school by 7:30.

Anyhow, that is all for now. Just feeling better about doing some stuff on my to do list! It will never end, but at least I can chip away at it and make it shorter.