what I've been up to lately...

I realize that I did one of these just a few days ago, but the last few days have been quite eventful!

I cleaned out my craft room on Wednesday for the first time in almost 2 years... Needless to say it had nearly turned into that proverbial closet where you open the door and things fall out at you... It isn't totally done yet. I've found that I need more organizational equipment - Rubbermaid drawers and such... so Saturday, that will be the project I do with Joe, organizer extraordinaire.

Yesterday, I cleaned my room, the living room and the bathroom. Impressive in the extreme... The bathroom was not difficult. It's cleaned biweekly by the maid service that my mom and I couldn't live without. But even though the living room is cleaned just as often, with two cats, two dogs, and especially *me*, it does not stay clean long... I have a bad tendency to spread out all my accoutrement. I had books still out here from classes, mail that didn't need to be opened, or was opened but was left, tossed where it landed, and tons of knitting stuff all over the room.

My bedroom though... oh... my bedroom was truly a disgrace... The only thing that I can say even partially in my defense is that I can live quite happily in the middle of a "disorganized" mess and I hate cleaning if I don't *have to*. The dust bunnies were about an inch thick in some places... They more closely resembled lint from the dryer than anything else... I still haven't gotten to everything behind my bed yet... I'm going to wait until the dust settles a little bit to give my allergies a bit of a rest before I take up the mattresses and vacuum under and behind the bed. I need to take a good look at what's under my bed and on the floor of my closet, get rid of the trash and what can be donated, dust, wash, and put away somewhere it can all be useful. I know somewhere under the bed is all my stained glass and glass equipment from high school and all that really needs to be put in its very own drawer in my craft room. I have to find the vacuum attachments for getting underneath my dresser and whatnot too... And everything will need to be dusted at least twice more with several days in between to let the dust settle again before it will really start to look clean in there... I say this because five minutes after I dusted the tops of my dressers there was more dust settling as to be noticeable. The rugs also need to be taken outside and beaten as they haven't moved more than an inch on the floor in the last three years and are no doubt full of dirt and dust, even after being vacuumed several times. So it will probably take at least a week of being conscientious and vacuuming and dusting every other day before it's good and clean... Another reason I clean my room so rarely is that I get kinda OCD about it when I do...

Between my craft room and all the others, I threw out about four full-sized trash bags of junk, unusable scraps, and more junk... Well, I probably could have found a use for the "unusable scraps" eventually, says the pack-rat, but since there was no immediate need, I convinced myself to let a good bit of it go... I also have a good sized box and a trash bag full of old clothes, shoes and other stuff to give to the Goodwill. So yay! Charitable giving...

All this cleaning was precipitated by my parents getting the house refinanced after the addition to get a better interest rate and in preparation of the new cabin construction. The appraiser came earlier this morning, which was spent with all of us frantically doing last minute straightening and vacuuming. The financing for the cabin will be processed starting next week and will take about two months, with us closing on it sometime in August. In the interim, we will go up to Virginia at some point in July to make all the construction decisions, pick out flooring, appliances, cabinets, granite for the counter tops, etc, and finalize the blueprints in plenty of time to submit them to the county so that the permits will be granted and the foundation poured by the time the wood, etc is delivered to the site, probably mid-to-late September at the latest (because wood can't sit out there in the open for long, the cabin will go up and the outside sealed within just a few construction days - the inside takes a bit longer). The cabin, we hope, will be done by December and during that break we can move at least some essential furniture into the house - mattresses, sofas, dishes, etc.

Today, I also made some exciting purchases. Despite the fact that we have Tropical Storm Barry going on outside - something I didn't even realize until I got home from the store, I just thought it was raining - I went over to JoAnn Fabrics & Crafts this afternoon. I was stir crazy after all the cleaning and JoAnn is having a sale... So I went in the rain, which started around 1pm today. I found that a good deal of their unfinished wood is on crazy clearance. I got four 11" candlesticks for about $1.50 each. I got a pine quilt stand for the cabin (we've been looking for one) for $15. And I got a coat rack for about $2.50. Pretty good, neh? But that wasn't the best buy! I got an easel - like a stand-up artist's easel that usually sells for $149.99 - for $24.47! It expands to accommodate canvases up to 50" tall. There wasn't a thing wrong with it. The company had discontinued the model and JoAnn was having a difficult time selling them, wanting to clear out room for other things, so I got the very last one that they had in the store for $24.47! I was sure that they had made a mistake and also that I'd never get it into the my little Toyota Camry, but they didn't and I did and I brought it home anyway. Yay! I've been wanting one since my sophomore year of high school, but they always cost so much money that I never did. But now I have! I'm so happy! I can't wait to use it to repair a painting I did six years ago that was damaged when we moved house three years ago and I still haven't had a chance to fix it... and of course when I paint new things...