Step Away From the Housework

After a few gray, foggy or rainy days our Carolina blue skies returned yesterday. I had plans to stay home and tackle a lot of cleaning and organizing.

First on the agenda was vacuuming the entire house. In order to properly evict the dust bunnies under the table, I put the chairs up. I remember doing this at the end of the day in elementary school so that the custodian could come around with his machine to clean the floors. Anybody else remember doing that?
Well, sunny days are great for getting me motivated and energized to tackle housecleaning, but the only drawback is that they also put the spotlight on every dust bunny, smudge, spill, etc.

After vacuuming all of the hardwood floors and dusting the baseboards, I got to thinking as long as the chairs were up I might as well wash the floors too. Most of the first floor of my house is hardwood so it is a pretty big job. When I looked at the clock I figured I had enough time to get them done before lunch. Also I would work up an appetite and burn some calories too. Oh boy ~ how exciting ~ a win-win situation all around!!

Actually the job does go pretty fast with this.

And the floors really do shine when I finished. Makes me feel like dancing.

After my well-deserved lunch :-) I decided to celebrate the beautiful weather and take Peanut for a walk. I scored some major doggy points with that decision.

After our walk I planned to tackle the next job on my list - bathroom cleaning. About that time my son called to tell me he was in the area and did I want anything to drink from Sonic. He read me the list of specialty coffee drinks. Oh, yum the hazelnut latte was calling my name. I know this was a tough decision - clean bathrooms or sit and chat with my son while drinking a latte.

The smell of cookies permeated the air.

By the time my son left it was getting a bit late to start in on the bathrooms (sounds like a good excuse to me). So, I moved to the next job on my list - organizing mom's belongings. When my mom moved here in September a lot of her belongings ended up in my garage. Slowly I have been sorting through them. I emptied one box yesterday that contained a large stack of journals she had kept. Well, that put the brakes on my housecleaning!! I spent some time reading through a few of the entries. What a beautiful treasure she has left for her children. It was so wonderful to re-live her happier days. She and my dad had a happy life together filled with family, friends, tennis, golf, celebrations and travel. In the midst of her present situation it was so nice to be reminded of that.

She had written this in the front of her oldest journal. Apparently my brother gave it to her as a Christmas gift that year. She would have been 48 then. One thing my mom has told me more than once is that if she had it to do over again she would worry less about the housework and spend more time enjoying life. Hmm. . . maybe she has a point there.

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Once again I give you my heartfelt thanks for your kind & supportive comments. It will never cease to amaze me what a wonderful community we share in the blog world. To think that people I have never met face to face would take the time to leave such caring comments is very touching to me and has helped make this journey with my mom so much easier.

So, gals . . . at least for a few moments, drop your dust cloths, brooms, vacuums or dish cloths and do something that will put a song in your heart and a smile on your pretty face. You deserve it!!!