I am so far behind on housework that it almost doesn’t matter where I start.

I don’t mean the routine stuff like washing the dishes. I’ve done that by hand since my dishwasher quit cleaning them adequately at least five years ago but, as I’ve blahgged about somewhere sometime, I actually prefer to wash dishes by hand. And I don’t mean cleaning the Blue and Only Bathroom because it is a small bathroom that only takes about five minutes to clean. And I don’t mean vacuuming because running Roomba involves moving some furniture (or not) and pressing CLEAN. Dusting? Let’s not talk about dusting…

I mean my ongoing prodject (intentionally misspelled) to eradicate cosmic debris so that the beach urchins don’t have to rent a dumpster to clean up after me some day. And so that I can beeee freeeeeee!!!! Freeeeeeee from the shackles and chains of clutter, flotsam, jetsam, and cosmic debris! So I can walk through the Landfill without ramming into pieces of furniture (and subsequently forgetting about the ramming incident and then wondering where the heck that big ugly bruise came from).

The Landfill is not a big house. It is a little 1959 ticky-tacky sorta ranch-type house with an A-dition and a teeny tiny woods behind the back yard. It is our first house. It was the only house anywhere near the Planet Ann Arbor that we could afford that actually had a woods behind it. When we moved in, in June, 26 years ago and four months before Lizard Breath was born, it was huge. To us. It practically echoed. How would we ever fill it up? Well, somehow we did fill it up. Not necessarily with the stuff that my expensive taste might have dictated, because we couldn’t afford that. Our decor was and is a conglomeration of Student Ghetto and Early In-Law. Fortunately, we are not compulsive hoarders. Whew, did I just say that? I guess so. We do collect stuff but we aren’t hoarders. That syndrome scares the heck out of me and there have been people in both of our families who had it or have it. Not us thank you god. We do not have to walk around in little aisle-ways between head-high stacks of newspapers and magazines or whatever. I *can* actually let Roomba run without moving a whole lot of stuff if I want to. And I am very anti-materialistic these days. “Travelin’ light” is my new mantra. But we still have stuff. I don’t know how you can live in a house for 26 years and raise two children there and not have stuff. I don’t want to wait until I’m 80 to start reducing that stuff.

Today. What did I have the psychological energy to do and where did I want to start? I very randomly started with the little blue linen closet in the Blue and Only Bathroom. Beach towels, anyone? Why are there so many blasted beach towels everywhere I go. Oh, I know, it’s so I can take them all to the Lockview Laundromat in Sault Ste. Siberia and load up three triple loaders and WASH them. Fun times! We don’t use beach towels here at the Landfill any more and the Moominbeach does NOT need any more, there’s a six-foot stack there. Houghton Lake? I don’t want to dump stuff there but these are nice towels. Whadda you guys think?

I don’t know what to do about the beach towels but I weeded out a whole bunch of single bed sheets that haven’t been used in maybe 15 years and a couple of shredded towels. And I wrapped up a couple of little packages for posterity. Embroidered/appliqued pillowcases with crocheted edges that were made by my moom and mother-in-law. I ironed them and labeled one package “Finlayson” and the other “Courtois”. Couldn’t get rid of those, even though the fabric that some of the Finlayson/MacMullan pillowcases were made out of is starting to rip.

That was all I did for the good of the Landfill today besides all of the day-to-day cooking, cleaning, laundry or whatever. The GG did some urushiol oil removal from the front “garden” and vacuumed out the Dogha and the Ninja, both of which were in desperate need of that…

6 Responses to “I am so far behind on housework that it almost doesn’t matter where I start.”

  1. Margaret Says:

    I have closets that need serious work and no motivation to start them. My house looks fine unless you look in the hidden places. I hate that!! I don’t know what to do with extra beach towels–but we have too many blankets around here; I don’t even know what size they are!

  2. laurie Says:

    i crave getting rid of stuff, too. but i pick things up and put them down again because it seems too daunting. today doug got rid of the old lawn mower by giving it away on craigslist. but that doesnt’ really count because he bought a new one. so we have the same number of lawnmowers as before: one.

    i do have a bunch of green roller shades, good condition, that no longer fit our porch windows now that we have had replacement windows put in. we are trying to figure out who might want them. they need to have windows exactly the same size as ours were before we replaced them.

    daunting. it’s all so daunting.

  3. pooh Says:

    Animal shelters and pet stores can use old towels. The beach towels might be too large, but you could always ask. If they are too big, you could do a twenty minute sewing gig, cutting them into pieces and zigzagging the edges. Craigslist is another option. If you have it in your area, you could also try gigoit.com. You list stuff that you’re willing to give away. It seems to work especially well with kid’s stuff. GIGO = garbage in, garbage out, although gigoit.com is more about keeping stuff OUT of the garbage. Actually, maybe the beach towels could go to a womans’ shelter, if they’re still in nice shape. I admire that you are working on this. I have to get busy on Dan’s room upstairs, with Dan’s input before he moves to La-La Land. uggh!

  4. kayak woman Says:

    Laurie: What do you mean, you only have one lawnmower? (-: I bet my father-in-law had five! Everybody else, I can only do a very little bit of this at a time. I cannot get rid of my kids’ stuff unless it is literally garbage, like old bags or receipts or candy wrappers or whatever.

  5. jane Says:

    salvation army for the towels. drive around the back (follow the signs) and the nice people will probably come over and take them. then you drive off feeling much better.

  6. MOM Says:

    The blue flowers are chickory.