3 Pairs of Gloves and 3 Bags

It's been a 3 pairs of gloves and 3 bags kind of day. And I am not talking about my wardrobe. These were vinyl gloves and trash bags.

I went on a serious cleaning blitz today.

Before Mary Beth, my realtor, came at 9:00 AM, I already had a load of dishes nearly done washing.

After she left, I immediately got down to my cleaning, culling, and packing. I didn't even play a couple of hours of Mah Jong on my laptop this time. I got down to serious business right away.

First of all, I moved inside, from the front porch, Neil's grandfather's large antique trunk. Having sat out on the porch for over a year, it had accumulated a bit of grime, which had to be addressed.

Once that was done, I lined it with a large sheet that I was no longer using, and then started filling it up with blankets and quilts. Doing that freed up a lot of room on the shelves in the library.

While doing that, I had to start a load of laundry because I noticed that one of the cats ~ most likely that damn Attila ~ pissed on one of the quilts.

I cleared off the rocking chair in the library as well. The drop cloth that was on the chair also had to go into the wash, also for the same reason.

And I packed 2 large bags of material to bring to Nesta at church.

The next stage of operation was to clean off one wall of shelves in the library. That's where a good portion of the culling began and packing began. I packed one large box and 2 smaller boxes.

Most of the stuff packed was decorations. And I even included the decorations from the bathroom, living room, and kitchen, like the fish bottles, fish lantern and clay pot, Ariana's clay lighthouse, the Lithuanian pottery, Ariana's ceramics, Neil's Cheshire cat, my amber glass globe, etc.

The rest of the stuff was either tossed or put on the now-cleaned shelves to sell at a later date.

At this point, I decided to take a break for lunch where I enjoyed a couple of chicken enchiladas and read a few chapters of Shōgun by James Clavell.

After my break, I moved the operation into the living room.

All the stuff that was still on the stairs was removed before I attempted to clean the cabinet that stood by the stairs. After all, I did not want to have the dust from the stairs fall on the cabinet after I had just cleaned it.

The top of the cabinet was a mess. The lamp was brown with dust. There were papers everywhere. But in a short while, all that didn't belong on the cabinet was gone, and the top of the cabinet looked spotless in the first time in years.

Next came tackling inside that cabinet. God! I haven't looked inside the cabinet in ages. I forgot what was in there. How surprising it was to find several decks of angel cards, including one that never was even opened.

Meanwhile, the laundry continued washing.

After the cabinet was all spiffed up, I attacked the low table by the dog crate ~ and I attacked it both top and bottom. 95% of the stuff there was paper. And while most of it was obviously destined for the trash, I still had to go through every piece to make sure I did not throw out anything important.

And it was a good thing I made sure to go through all the paper, because I found quite a few items that were important, like Neil's various Professional Engineer registrations. I even found the owner's manual to the Garmin GSP that Neil was looking for.

Once that area was all cleared, it was amazing to see all the dust bunnies that had been hiding there for eons. I swear there were enough dust bunnies to make a colony of weasels.

Finally, the cleaning was starting to wind down. It was already nearly 5:00 ~ time to feed the dogs and Big Fat Stevie.

There was one more thing I was going to do before finally calling it quits for the day.

The potted cactus garden was in serious need of attending. My white ghost euphorbia had snapped while I was bringing in my plants from the porch last week. Plus, what was once a nice potted cactus garden was now a sorry mess.

I pulled up the entire potted garden, sorted through the mess, and repotted the still thriving plants. When I was done with that, I stuck many chop sticks around the edge of the pot in order to discourage its use as a litter box.

With that all done, all that was left was to sweep up the mess.

It felt good to have been finally done with all this work. As my friend Ruth would say, after a productive day of cleaning and house work, I can really feel pious today.