Everybody Count Off

Deadlines are powerful motivators. I've been wanting to deep clean the house (and organize the crap out of it <-- literally and metaphorically!) for months now. I keep saying I'll get around to it. And now school starts in exactly a week. Training for work starts this week.

It's time. My bike is in the shop. My car will be in the shop tomorrow. So I've been knuckling down in the house.

When I go for a long time without cleaning/organizing (and, let's face it, I can go a long time), all of a sudden I get very motivated and just tear through the house, re-organizing, giving stuff to goodwill, throwing stuff out, and even re-decorating. G jokes that if they're not careful, I'll throw out Lucy and him in the midst of all of it. So when I get this way, he walks around the house yelling, "OK! Everybody count off!" to make sure we're all still alive and well. And home.

My functional shelf. The one reserved for classes and teaching.

No more piles of papers. No more piles of unread magazines. No more dust. I even vacuumed. The whole house. Even the stairs. This is why people hire maids, fyi.

It's as if someone is coming to stay with us, but they're not.

The house will not be this clean again until sometime in December. Maybe. Probably not. The house is like, never this clean.

But it feels good. I can see all of my shoes in the closet. There are no random cords or bills on the floor upstairs. The rabbit hair is at a minimum for the time being. But only for the time being.

I feel like this:

I sit on the floor and foam roll a lot while watching TV. Lucy glares at me.

I'm exhausted. But I'm organized. And no one got thrown away.