Spring Cleaning

Well, the time has come and I suppose now is as good a time as any...for spring cleaning.  And maybe, just maybe if we work really hard on it, Spring will actually appear.  Ugh, I'm soooo ready for some sunshine and warmer temperatures!

Madolyn decided on Saturday about noon that she wanted to move her bedroom to the basement.  I was actually cleaning the basement at the time and thought, what the heck?  I was secretly dying to have her bedroom upstairs as our office and here was my chance.

Of course, things like this always sound really good until you start digging in and realize what a huge undertaking it becomes.  She was great help moving things out of the office and her things in...and I was right beside her, but now that it's my turn to move my office stuff upstairs to her old bedroom, well, you can imagine, she's not nearly as excited.  Thankfully, my little man, Lane, loves stuff like that.  He was a pack mule last night making trip after trip up the stairs for me.  Man, I hope he never outgrows that!

It really is a good thing that this finally happened, minus the mess right now, because it is forcing me to purge!  My mom was working at the resale shop on Saturday and happened to mention that they needed household-type stuff.  Yee-Haw.  Just so happens I have a boatload - okay, maybe just a backseat full of house stuff, etc., for them!  And then as I'm looking through things, I think, oh, I really like that wreath, there's nothing wrong with it at all.  I'm not sure I want to get rid of it, it's so cute...so why has it been in a plastic bag tucked away in a closet for six years?  Right, I don't need it.  Out it goes.

I have found stacks of picture frames with old family photos still in them.  Old as in pre-Lane or early-Lane.  They are funny to look at now and it hasn't even been that long ago.  Then there was the photo for the church directory of Jay, Gunner and I.  Yeah, that's right, before we had human children, we took our K-9 child, Gunner, to our family photos.  He was such a sweetie...

Today I have sorted through bills and paperwork.  This is the bane of my existence at times.  I will catch up and swear I will never get behind again.  You know if I would just file these things away each month instead of piling them on top of the printer for six months, it wouldn't be so bad.  Yes, I know this.  And yet still ignore the warning. 

I searched online to see how long you are supposed to keep records for tax purposes...good heavens, me and my simple mind could not even decipher the IRS's tips.  Honestly, just tell me, three years, seven years, whatever.  Instead it's something like, "If such and such applies to you, then it's three years."  And then there's further explanation.  My thoughts at this point are three years, and some of the crud I keep, I'm discarding at the end of the year.  I figure with the technology, I can find some of it out by searching online at my accounts and such.

I have these big plans, of course, with my new office.  Plans like keeping on top of paperwork.  Learning how to scan photos (watch out readers, if I figure that one out).  Keeping up with photo albums (which honestly I have been doing okay on lately...although I have over 400+ to print...so really I'm just as behind).  The answer to all my procrastination problems was that the office was downstairs in a room with no windows...so now what will be my excuse?!

I love the idea of having two windows in the office as opposed to zero.  Now Madolyn will have zero windows.  But she's at that age she doesn't really care about sunshine.  For a while now, we were thinking we would need to finish the bathroom in the basement and then she would make the move downstairs.  She gave up.  I'm thinking that's a good thing because if we did have a finished bathroom down there, she may never surface again.   We'll look around and wonder, "Where's Mad?"  Oh, she went downstairs.  Hmm, okay.  Two hours later, she'll pop upstairs.  I guess we'll just have to get used to that.

Jay asked me what color I was going to repaint my new office.  Ha.  I just repainted it super-bright turquoise in August for Mad's birthday.  Super-bright turquoise it is...for a while unless someone else wants to paint it.  That room has been painted more times than any other room in the house.  I'm not touching it for quite a while...I'll just have to wear sunglasses. 

Hope the rest of you are in the spring cleaning spirit.  I have to stay onboard as long as possible because the fever will soon pass and I'll just put it off again 'til next year.