delete all

I just spent a few moments cleaning out my Yahoo email box. I had gathered close to 4,000 old emails and decided to purge everything that was older than April of 2009. I was left with close to 1300 emails for the past 12 months. Wow. That is a lot of email. I do get things automatically delivered to my email, facebook posts etc, but most of these were actually communications regarding the Library and the Friends as this account is devoted to those two entities and the people who are involved with them. I have a personal email that I use for the family and things pertaining to my kids' lives/activities.

Amazing how we gather stuff. The girls and I will be having a garage sale sometime this summer. Most likely very early on as the rest of the summer is quickly becoming booked with assorted things. They are eager to make some money off of the things they have outgrown, whether it is clothes, or toys or 'dustables.' I told them it will take them close to a week to set up and price everything, make their signs etc. They didn't flinch. Guess they are determined...which is fine. It will be a good experience for them to run one.

Still reading away. I finished another paranormal romance, Big Bad Wolf by Christine Warren and also a women's fiction book titled Starting Out Sideways by Mary E. Mitchell. Both were good stories. Sort of interesting to switch back and forth between these two genres. I'm really getting a feel for the differences in pacing, character development and even dialogue as I can make very fresh comparisons. I'm also starting to see the formulaic nature of the romances versus the women's fiction titles.

And with that, it is Friday and time for the weekend. Enjoy.

spring cleaning

Now that our flowers beds are looking much better, just need to get fresh mulch delivered and spread, it is time to tackle the house. I'm going to start that chore today and have several projects in mind for the next few weeks.

Some of this spring cleaning means tackling my old writing desk. When the hubby convinced me to get a laptop, I stopped using the desk in our bonus room. The desk drawers need to be purged and reorganized, but why stop there? I bought shelf and drawer liner yesterday and plan on cleaning and purging all the drawers in the house. The trick will be to not get bogged down and to keep a steady pace as I go through and pitch things and reclaim others things.

I have to be in the right frame of mind to accomplish these chores, but I feel like I'm up to the task. First thing, though, is to just clean my house. Usually on breaks or vacations I enlist the kids to help me do the weekly cleaning. We all slacked off last week and didn't do a thing...well, I did wipe down the bathrooms, but beyond that, not a thing.

Time to pay the piper this week. I have my 'weapons' ready and plenty of time today to begin. My reward will be to finish in time to spend a few moments with the third King Raven book, "Tuck." I finished "Scarlet" last night....I'm enjoying this Stephen Lawhead series and as far as rewards go, being able to immerse myself in the Welsh Marches is quite a treat.

spring cleaning

To continue the theme I started yesterday, I think I've fallen victim to the spring cleaning bug. I have the sudden and quite unexpected urge to take inventory of the closets and cabinets, clear out items that haven't been used in the past 12 months and box them up for Goodwill. If garage sales weren't such an effort and if soccer didn't dominate every weekend, I'd even contemplate doing one of those in the next few weeks.

How is it that we gather so much stuff? Some stuff is given to us, other stuff we actually purchase ourselves. Reminds me of the old George Carlin routine about stuff and how we need bigger houses and garages and storage sheds to hold all of our stuff.

The downside to this is that when this mood strikes I've been known to dispose of things I later regret. Balance and moderation, even in spring cleaning or a ruthless purging of stuff? I'll keep you posted.