I’m trying to get some laundry done tonight but I started late so I think the dryers going to be going until midnight. Oops!

I should have started doing the laundry earlier but I was busy doing something else and completely forgot. I have a guest coming this weekend so I stripped the bed in one of the spare rooms and I’m washing all the bedding.

I wish I had a laundry room upstairs rather than in the basement. Our basement has a low ceiling and I’m tall so I’m always hitting my head on the duct work. Not fun! Plus the floor is really cold to walk on at this time of year. What we really should do is put in new basement floor tiles – maybe with some radiant heating below them. Now that would be nice. Actually, before doing that it would make sense to dig out the basement floor so that the ceiling wouldn’t be so low.

Must win Lottery!

My dear cousin has been in the hospital for several months. I only learned of her illness shortly before Christmas and at that time she was still gravely ill and in the ICU of a hospital of a town five hours from where I live.

Thankfully, she’s now on the road to recovery even though she’s still in the hospital. I think I’m going to use an online flower delivery service to send her some flowers.

I haven’t seen my cousin for at least six or seven years. It’s been far too long, but I have talked to her on the phone a few times since I last saw her but even that’s been years. I was going to go to Ottawa between Christmas and New Years, where my cousin lives, to see my brother but that fell through and I ended up not going … if I had I definitely would have visited my cousin if I’d gone. Hopefully I can schedule another trip in the near future and if I do I’ll make sure I get a visit in.

I haven’t seen a lot of my family in quite a while. By this I mean cousins and the only Aunt that I have left. That’s going to change this year.

I’m exhausted! I’ve been on a major cleaning and organizing spree lately. I’ve spent the last four days cleaning various areas of my house.

Actually I haven’t just been cleaning. I’ve been “purging” my house of clutter! Earlier today my husband and took four bags of old clothes to a donation area. We also dropped off a lot of our old electronics at a recycling station. We had a very old computer, computer monitor, two printers, a scanner and several mouses and so on that we’d needed to get rid of forever. I’m so happy that all that stuff is gone now.

Friday I spent about 8 hours cleaning under two beds in our spare rooms (we have a small house with only TWO real closets so space under the bed IS storage space!), sweeping, dusting and mopping on the main and upper floors of our house.

Saturday I cleaned out the big closet in our smallest spare room and completely cleaned the room. By this I mean I went through all of the drawers and threw out a lot of junk! I also turned on the very old computer and removed all of the old personal files since I knew we’d be getting rid of the computer. I tried to format the hard drive but it wouldn’t work. (we eventually took the hard drive out and ran a magnet over it to try to destroy the data, and we also smashed the hard drive – just to be on the safe side. LOL) Then I went into the master bedroom and went through the three storage boxes I have under the bed. This started my clothes donation pile. I then started going through the clothes drawers and organizing them. All in all I think I cleaned for about ten hours on Saturday. I was so busy I even forgot to take my medicines for most of the day.

By Saturday night my leg muscles were hurting. I figured that I wouldn’t be able to move on Sunday and I planed to just rest on Sunday. I mean, I’d been working pretty hard and I deserved a break, right? .. somehow my brain didn’t feel the same way come Sunday … For some reason I decided that the bathroom simply had to be cleaned. Totally cleaned. I mean I cleaned everything – the tub, the walls, the ceiling, hand scrubbed the tiles on the floor trying to make the grout white again … yeah .. I cleaned the bathroom for about 7 hours!

I don’t know why I’m on this cleaning frenzy other than I really have to get the house organized. There are a lot of changes coming up in my life in the near future and organizing and decluttering the house is part of what I need to do to get ready for what’s going to be happening.

Anyway … you’d think that at least I would have taken a break today wouldn’t you? Nope .. I ended up cleaning out the area under my kitchen sink, and then going into the basement and cleaning one small area. I went through some drawers down stairs. I was actually looking for something but ended up going through the whole set of drawers and cleaning them out. It needed to be done. It’s amazing the papers and clutter we hung on to! As I’ve cleaned I’ve found old shopping lists, old Christmas cards, flyers for things like food allergies austin or shopping deals, old business cards I printed out for my former business and for my websites … it just goes on and on. I don’t need any of that stuff anymore.

I have a feeling the decluttering has only just begun. I think that once I’ve gone over the whole house I’ll need to go over it again and get rid of more stuff. We have a LOT of stuff.

Do you ever get on a cleaning and organizing trend like I have in the last few days and find that you just can’t stop until you’ve finished the area you’re working on? Well one good thing about my busy Friday to Sunday was that I had the best, deepest sleep last night that I’ve had in months! I hope that I can sleep that well again tonight.