At least I didn't have to buy the book

You ever have one of those days when you look around your house and are suddenly horrified at the state into which things have fallen? I did that this morning. Piles of things that I had stopped seeing and had become part of the landscape... the Easter center piece on the dining room table complete with dead flowers... I'm pretty sure even the dust bunnies had dust on them. It was bad.

So I spent a good chunk of the day cleaning up and encouraging other people to help out. It felt so good to get the piles of junk lying around put away, to straighten up the furniture and move some things around, to get some of the layers of dust taken care of so people would stop drawing pictures in it. The downstairs living areas actually became a place I wanted to spend time in again rather than a place I walked through quickly because I couldn't stand to be in it.

It's a funny thing about cleaning and making things look nice, it tends to have a domino affect. Not only is the downstairs a lot better, but younger people also cleaned up the toy loft. We can walk through it again! I then sorted out my desk a bit because it looked so disorganized compared to the rest of the room. Tomorrow I have a book case I want to do some deep cleaning on for the same reason.

I can tell when a season of life has felt a little out of control because it shows in how the house looks. In calm seasons, I'm pretty good about doing bits of straightening and cleaning throughout the day and week. In crazier ones, there is a lot of dropping things and running to the next thing. In reality it wouldn't take any more time to actually put the dropped items away, but in the moment it sure feels as though it would. I like the calmer, tidier seasons better.

Now to continue upstairs and finally put away the last little bits from out trip that have decorated my bedroom floor for the past couple of weeks. I'm growing weary of them. One good thing about all this sorting and cleaning...  I found a library book I had lost. I actually had even forgotten I had checked it out until I got the notice about its due date. Realizing I had no idea at all where the book could be was a big part of the impetus for doing a real clean. I'm glad it worked.

The moral of this story is to check out lots of library books so that you are forced to clean your house to find them.

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