Spring Cleaning

Every spring I want to fulfill an ongoing resolution to tidy up and get organized.  Spring cleaning is the apparition of the oft repeated New Year's Resolution of "Out with the old, in with the new," made flesh.  I always intend to do something, scrub something, move something, throw something away, but before I know it, it's July and it is too damn hot, so I think, "Next year, I'll do it next year."  I imagine hoarders must start out much the same way, huh?



This year, in my quest to better myself, I may actually get some of this done.  Really though, I probably can't avoid it.  We moved in with my dad in January and are about to put a lot of our stuff, now piled up and around my father's house, into a storage building built by my husband in the backyard.  We've been tripping over our many boxes and bags since we moved in, since there's really no place for any of it, so this will be nice.  Not only will we have room to move around, but I'll finally get to have that "spring cleaning" feeling of accomplishment.

This also means we can save money, in several different ways.  The storage building will pay for itself within about 8 months since our alternative was to rent a space.  At about $90 a month, no thanks.  The other way is just, well, stupid.  Since we can't find anything, we have to keep buying stuff we already have...somewhere in the boxes stacked around.  We could have been more organized, but we weren't.  We could go through everything, but we didn't, haven't and will not, not yet.  We will go through things once, pretty much, and that will be as we're deciding what will go into the storage building, what will stay in the house, what will go to GoodWill and what will go in the trash.  Most of the "go in the trash" stuff got sorted out in the move, so there shouldn't be much of that.

We should start moving things in to the storage building next weekend, probably in time to feel all smug like Martha Stewart for three or four weeks before a tornado comes along and blows everything away.  Mother Nature is truly the most efficient "cleaner" around!

Oh, and I'd like to point out that I'm trying really, really hard not to refer to the storage building as "the shed."  It's just too..."The Waltons."

"Grandpa, where's John Boy?"


"Out to the shed, young'n, out to the shed."