Cleaning House - I Can Breathe More Freely

Since John was born, and my recovery was slow and very difficult, things kind of piled up around the house, especially a veritable mountain of clothes in our bedroom. It was right between summer and winter clothes, and it seemed that after having a baby, my clothing size has been constantly changing, which is good, but difficult to figure out a wardrobe.

But, FINALLY, I’ve gotten it under control and figured it out. I have sorted through all the clothes and have found some things to wear and some things to organize and pack away. After I worked my first week back at my grading the TOEFL online from home job, which was 32 hours, and our power was out for a couple of those days, my schedule drastically decreased. The following week I worked an 8 hour shift, and the week after that a 4 hour shift. That gave me some time to work on the house.

I get big plans in my head of to-do lists that I used to accomplish before having John that I have to scale back to about half. It has been a good learning experience for me. I am improving little by little at pacing myself and not trying to do it all at once. I only over-extended myself a few times while I was working on the house, lifting and moving heavy things that I should have waited for Seth to do…I got a bit impatient and wanted to get it done “now” while I was in the mood. Well, the conclusion is that every room in our house has been organized and cleaned, and it feels SO good to be in our house now. I can breathe more freely and enjoy the space so much more and with less stress. A lot of rooms needed to have furniture re-arranged; we put a couple small dressers into the guest room for Seth’s clothes so now all his clothes are in the same room which is nice for him. 

We moved our piano into the dining room and the book shelf to the living room and moved our couches facing the fireplace so that our fireplace can become functional. We also got a half a cord of wood to prepare for emergencies – and to have cozy fires in the winter sometimes. Our landlord let us get some new fireplace doors too because there weren’t any. We’ll install those early December when we have time, and we still need to get the chimney inspected and find a fireplace grate and some tools and a dutch oven for cooking in a log fire if the power goes out…all in good time though. We are making progress a bit at a time.       

And I don’t want to make it seem like I did all the work myself. Seth is the most helpful husband, and I am grateful for all his help. He is so good taking care of John and helping around the house. I am truly thankful. As an example, the day before we left for our trip, and I had a ton of packing and preparing to do, and I truly didn’t want to leave a mess to come home to, I woke up and went downstairs to find, not a mountain of dirty dishes to plague me,

but a bright clean kitchen and a mountain of clean dishes and a full, running dishwasher. Seth doesn’t admit he was the one who did it, but unless there are kitchen cleaning fairies in our house, I just know it was him, and I am thankful.