Question Everything

Spring has sprung.   It must be time to start that spring cleaning.   Wait, it's not spring there?   It was sixty-three degrees here today.   Perhaps the temperature is to blame for my spring cleaning fever then.   I've caught something at any rate and I'm in fever of organization.

My brother-in-law, Eric, texted me yesterday saying his wife, Kelly, was going through the entire kitchen, organizing every cabinet, saying visiting our house the prior week had inspired her to do some organizing when she got home.  I texted back that I was doing the same thing here.

For some reason I'm in what I like to call, "question everything" mode.  I look at a drawer, cabinet, closet, shelf, room and everything in it and ask myself questions like:  why are these things stored here?   Is this the best place for these items?  Do I even need this thing?   If I don't need it now, do I want to keep it for later?  If we don't need it any more, is there someone who does need it?

When I'm done asking these questions in my mind, things start to move around.   Things change.  Today I went through my desk drawers and found most of the items didn't need to even be there.   The things I need most at my desk (paper for the printer and envelopes) somehow seemed to be in the next room and things I never used (empty iPad and iPhone boxes) were for some reason taking up an entire drawer.

With the desk drawers done, I moved on to the bar in the basement.   We had three fly swatters in one of the drawers there.   Was there a fly invasion sometime in the past that could only be combatted by three fly swatters?   There were about thirty other "things" that got re-assigned to other, more appropriate or useful areas of the house.

I informed my husband I was in one of my "let's organize the whole house, yay!" moods again.   He was super excited (I could tell.)  I explained I'd be doing a push of things to the basement mechanical room and the attic for the next several weeks.   Things like those empty iDevice boxes would go there for re-evaluation once the rest of the house had been gone through.  As long as I don't mess too much with my husband's mechanical room (and associated storage space) he lets me organize in peace.

My husband's been doing a bit of organizing lately as well, although his has been all digital.   His email of many years is tied to an ISP we're moving away from.  That same email is also associated with many, many online accounts.    He's been diligently changing a few each day and I think he's almost through his large list.   I'm going to buy him a beer to celebrate when he's done.

Tomorrow the children go back to school and I'll go back to organizing.   Who knows what I'll find in all of our stuff?

The Big Boy Update:  My son asked me today, "mom, what does love mean?"  I did my best to explain.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I asked my daughter if she had wiped her mouth after she'd finished eating something messy.   She said to me, "when I get my tongue out, I can clean my lips."  She then demonstrated and very nearly got a tenth of the icing off her smeared face.