Picking Up and Cleaning

This morning a friend sent me a message that she wanted to bring something over she had made. I looked at the living and thought . . Oh, my goodness. This place looks like a pig pen. Mostly around my stitching chair. It was such a mess. Half a dozen pieces of linen spread out on the floor where I was auditioning fabric for Love Your Family last night. There were at least four project bags in the floor because I had been kitting up things with floss that had arrived. Since we’re on keto, I’ve been printing recipes that look good. Those, along with a stack (a tall stack) of things to go downstairs were piled on the loveseat. There had been four boxes from JoAnn and Hobby Lobby in the dining room – not huge boxes, but boxes so I had unpacked those last night. Empty boxes in the dining room floor. A stack of ribbon, glue, cardstock and a few finishing supplies were on the sofa table.

It wasn’t like dirty dishes or candy wrappers or empty soda cans all over the place but it was a lot of clutter. I got busy cleaning. I threw out all the boxes, threw away all the empty plastic bags floss had arrived in.

I try to keep Addie’s room fairly clean and free of my clutter but . . a queen size bed in there that doesn’t have to be cleaned – that’s an awfully tempting place to pile stuff. Addie does not like clutter. Chad is the worst with EVERYTHING having to have a place and everything being out of sight and if you haven’t used it in the lat 10 minutes, you probably don’t need it any more. Nicole isn’t as bad as Chad but she’s much closer to being like Chad than she is like me. I never throw anything away. If I’m going to use it any time between now and next September, it needs to be by my chair! I knew Addie wouldn’t be here for a while. Football games the next two Saturdays so it would be atleast two weeks before she’d be here.

OK . . the family room was nice and tidy and ready for my friend.

Most of the things that go downstairs went into Addie’s room. I would get it off before she comes. I need to get more bins for the finishing materials – ribbon, trim, etc. The project bags went onto Addie’s bed. The extra linen went onto Addie’s bed. The floss that has arrived this week went onto Addie’s bed.

Then I went to Facebook. Nicole had posted this picture of Chad driving the old truck.

Then there was this conversation with Nicole. She wrote this on Facebook: I followed this beautiful truck to the coffee shop and the handsome guy driving bought me coffee

Then .. this:

Hmmm .. that sounds like they’re coming over here and I just made a mess in Addie’s room. I called Nicole and asked “Are y’all really coming over here?” Yes! They had been to Aldi, were eating breakfast at Addie’s favorite place in Carthage (Iggy’s), going by the meat market in Joplin, then passing by here on their way home.

All that stuff that should have gone downstairs . . I took it off Addie’s bed and hauled it downstairs.

That’s what I get for putting off doing what needed to be done in the first place.