A Reprieve in the Housekeeping Blues

I have terrible insomnia.  Was it brought on by drinking too much caffeine?  Probably.  Woke up a little after 3.  Laid in bed trying to go back to sleep until 4:15, then gave up and got up.  So much to do today but I am trying to be cheerful about it.  I did go to bed about 10 last night, so I got about 5 hours.  I can cope with that.  And I bet I'll have time for a short nap this afternoon.  One reason I think I woke up is I was wondering if school was going to be delayed because of snow.  It did snow a bit, enough to maybe justify a delay.  Oh shoot.  I just checked.  There is a two hour delay.  Hopefully either Rick or Hannah will be able to help me out. When there is a two hour delay on Tuesdays I have to be two places at once at the same time:  dropping off Sean in Arlington and taking Becky to her voices lessons located in the opposite direction and a different county.  Since I am not capable of bi-locating, this causes plans to be remade.  This has been happenings pretty consistently on Tuesdays for the last several weeks.

Anyway, when I came downstairs this a.m. I was kind of pleased with myself.  I had to walk through my upstairs hallway which used to be an obstacle course of the type featured on Hoarders.   Since I cleaned it all up (after three days of dreary work), I get a little buzz of accomplishment whenever I see it.  Decluttered, orderly places are calming, wouldn't ya know.  Cluttery, junked up places cause anxiety.  See?  I am gaining wisdom in my old age.

Then I came downstairs and remembered that I spent all day yesterday (in between other tasks) slowly working my way through the debris and laundry that was about shin deep on the floor of our mud/laundry room.  It was the worst it has ever been.  Just gross.  Now, while it is still pretty bad, you can see the floor!  You can actually walk to the washing machine/drying without having to step on anything other than the floor!  One thing I'd like to do this a.m. is collect a lot of the various items I salvaged and cleaned and take them to one of the donation boxes somewhere.  I have old backpacks, jackets that are too small, etc that I need to get out of the house pronto.  Otherwise they will just find themselves back in a big cruddy pile of clutter again.

And on top of these two little victories, I had to clean my basement for an American Heritage Girls event we were hosting on Saturday night.  That means I spent a little bit of Friday and a lot of Saturday cleaning.  I swept, dusted, vacuumed, scrubbed, tidied, etc.  It still has significantly cluttered places, but it is a bit cleaner and it is not quite so cluttered.  We did not quite clean up after the little get together, so I intend to spend ten minutes doing that today.  That's all it will take.  Should have done it sooner.

Today and tomorrow will be largely devoted to prepping for Aquinas.  Becky has tons of school work to do and I have two essays still to edit, many progress reports to write, planning and studying to do for Literature, composition and Latin.  But I am hoping that this weekend I can focus on cleaning clutter off my desk and the dining room table.

Hope springs eternal!