More Digging

Habits are to the soul what the veins and arteries are to the blood, the courses in which it moves.
-- Horace Bushnell

Thursday, September 16, 1999
One year ago: Crunch Mode
Two years ago: Pressure Produces Diamonds

I stopped at Fred Meyer on the way home from work. That's my best general-purpose store! They always seem to have what I need. Even the small location that's part of the Broadway Market close to my house had the air mattress and pump, and the blanket that I needed for my guests this weekend. I was in and out, and home before five o'clock which was pretty good time!

I was too hungry to start working on clean-up stuff, so I went down the street to Kidd Valley for a hamburger combo. While eating, I read my latest Edith Layton romance. Surprisingly, she has the heroine actually presented with a real conflict and dilemma to solve. No wonder the title of the book is The Choice.

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In the living room, I stripped the sheets off the mattress that's currently on the floor. (It's been there since June!) I cleaned off the coffee table, and shifted some boxes of books to a better place.

In the dining room, I continued digging through the pile of rubberstamping stuff, old papers, and random cruft, and got almost to the bottom! Then I had to move the sorted piles off the dining room table and back into the corner where I'd been working, so we'll have someplace to eat! I suppose my guests will need to sit at a table, rather than just eating at my computer desk as I mostly do.

In between all this, I made several excursions to take the trash out.

In the kitchen, I cleared and cleaned the counters, filling two boxes with cookbooks. I even got rid of a particularly nasty science project that's been sitting in my sink for such a long time, because I hadn't had the courage to take off the lid and dump the foul stuff! I also mopped the floor, and cleaned off the stove. Things look so much better, now!

My last project was the bathroom. (It was past eleven o'clock!) I wiped down the surfaces, including the windowsill that looks into the air shaft. The tub was in good shape, now that I use the no-rinse Tilex shower spray every day. That really works! I put various random pairs of earrings away. I tend to just set them down when I take them off after coming home from dancing -- a good way to lose them! I cleared off the top of the small set of drawers in there. Now only my zine collection and a box of Altoids in that space; reading and fresh breath! I got the floor in there, too.

Still left to do tomorrow afternoon before going to dinner:

• Take out all remaining trash and recycle
• vacuum living room and dining room
• pick up some clothes on the floor in my bedroom

which all seems doable to me. Then the fun and festivities can start!

Someone on the decluttr list posted some pictures of the mess in her house. I wish I'd taken some "before" pictures of my place! (Beth posted some images of her kitchen the other day.) I will take some shots of everything all nice and neat; maybe that will help me keep it that way!