I’ve Been a Busy Bee – A Busy Decluttering Bee

It seems as if life has gotten pretty busy lately in Jane’s Domain.

Last week I had to move all the furniture out of the living room so new carpeting could be installed. And then, a mere 24 hours later, I had to move it all back. And, because I’m a little OCD when it comes to furniture and knick-knack placement, I had to do it all myself.

This was an arduous process made bearable by the fact that we now have pretty new carpeting in the living room.

So now we’re hoping the carpet is Maggie proof. And we are also hoping that Twinks-the-hairball-yakking-cat will avoid it, too, but all bets are off because as you may know, you cannot control a cat.

Plus, 4 a.m. seems to be the magic Hairball Hour, and I am not awake at that time to shoo her off the Berber.

Nevertheless, as of today – an entire week after installation – I can happily report that the carpet is still in pristine condition.

Wonder if the “Caution” tape and the homemade barriers I’ve erected that would also come in handy during a zombie apocalypse have helped?

Nah, I’m just kidding. That would’ve been too much work, especially since I’m still in the “sinking my tootsies in the new carpet” stage and don’t want to have to climb over and under and in and around barriers just to reach the carpet myself.

But I will say that we’re watching our critters a whole lot more carefully these days.

I had other extra chores to do as well last week. We were hosting my brothers and sister this past weekend, so I knew I had to tackle the lower level. The bedroom down there has become the catch-all, U-Stor-It room for the past year or so ever since I packed up my parents’ house to sell it.

I had boxes of my parents’ photo albums in that room that I’ve been planning to scan, but have yet to start. I have my mother’s wedding dress in a box that I couldn’t throw away or donate…but I have no idea what to do with it. I had other miscellaneous bric-a-brac from their home collected over some sixty-three years of married life that I couldn’t seem to part with, but have no place to put – so I’ve kept it all in boxes in the bedroom downstairs.

I also had empty boxes and bins for all those things I need to someday clear out and organize. And I had the remnants of a dresser that I will someday refinish and place in my Craft Room that is also currently a storage area but hopes to be an official Craft Room. Someday.

You can imagine, then, the work it took to clear out and clean this bedroom. My brother John was coming along for the family weekend, so I knew I had to have that room ready for his stay. It took hours of hard, sweaty labor, but when I was done, I was relieved and happy with the results.

And then John ended up sleeping on the recliner in the living room in the lower level because he has to sleep with the TV on and there is no TV in the bedroom, a few short feet away.

Yeesh.

Fortunately, the weekend went off without a hitch and a good time was had by all. We had mom over and celebrated her birthday. Sure, we were a month early, but (a) mom sadly doesn’t know the difference, and (b) we wanted to celebrate when she had all her children together. I’m sure when October 23^rd rolls around I’ll celebrate with her again, but it was nice to have us all together.

Normally, when the family weekend visits are over, I take a day to put my home back to rights and then I zonk out for a day or two. The perfectionist in me spends a LOT of time cleaning and doing what I can to make it a great weekend for all and I’m pretty worn out by the time it’s over.

But I’m happy to report that my decluttering instincts were still in overdrive and I spent the better part of yesterday tackling the dreaded furnace room – or DFR for short.

Vince says anyone who enters that room must be wearing an OSHA-approved hard hat.

Isn’t Vince funny? Oh, soooo funny.

If you ever watched Friends, you may recall that Monica was a neat freak. Her apartment was always impeccably clean and organized. But she had a secret closet. And one day Chandler – who was told never to open that closet door – jimmied the lock. And, inside, was a veritable hoarder’s paradise. It was filled floor-to-ceiling with junk.

That’s how I have felt about my DFR. It’s my shame. It’s my “junk drawer” morphed into an entire room.

And I can’t stand it anymore so it has to go!

So I took those empty bins and boxes and spread them out in the living area in the lower level and waded into the DFR. I started sorting like nobody’s business. I had little sticky notes with headings and I separated and sorted and purged.  I hauled three large garbage bags to the garage. I have boxes ready for the donation center. And I’m starting to see the floor, er, I mean, the light at the end of the tunnel.

I still have hours (days?) to go, but at least I made a good-sized dent in this massive undertaking.

I see several more trips to the donation center in my future. And more trips to the resale shop. I don’t, however, see another garage sale in my immediate future. Two this summer was about two too many!

But unless we’re planning to build a dedicated Bric-a-Brac storage room in this house, I’m going to have to part ways with a few boxes.  Okay a whole lotta boxes!

Because I am NOT filling up the lower level bedroom again – I just finished decluttering in there!

And...no...I did NOT take any "Before" and "After" photos. Someday there may be "After" photos. But not yet.

If I Could Go Back…

I visited my mom yesterday. She had the newspaper on her lap and, for once, she opened it to read beyond the headlines on the front page. But she didn’t really understand what she was reading.

“Who is Harvey,” she asked.

“No, mom,” I said. “Harvey isn’t a ‘who’ – it’s a ‘what,'" I answered. And I explained that it was a devastating hurricane that has affected Texas and other states.

She expressed dismay…for about a half a second.

And then she read the headline again – and, once again, asked me about Harvey.

Sometimes I think she surely must be testing me.  That she really does remember, but she wonders if I’ll give her the same answer every time she asks.

But, sadly, I know mom truly doesn’t remember. That from moment to moment, her grasp on what is happening is fleeting. When she is in her little room in her rocking chair, she can be as comfortable as possible with her situation. But if we take her out of that comfort zone, she is stressed.

And she doesn’t know what is going to happen next. Or what she is supposed to do. And she very desperately does not want to appear to be incapacitated – and that, I think, is what stresses her the most.

I miss my mom. My old mom. The woman who was strong, intelligent, decisive and had an opinion about everything. Some of which I didn’t agree with. Ha. Okay, so there were many opinions mom had that I didn’t agree with. Funny to think that now I miss having those kinds of discussions with her.

And then I wish I could go back. Back to those days when mom would state an emphatic opinion and I’d just roll my eyes and say, “uh, huh…” If I could go back, I’d try to engage with her – and try to have the lively debate she really wanted to have.

Instead, I’d look at them as confrontations instead of discussions and I avoid confrontations like the plague. I’d end up doing whatever I could to get her focused on something else.

“Hey mom – does this hangnail look infected to you?”

Yeah. Like that worked. That mom knew what I was doing. But most of the time she’d let me change the subject anyway.

Mom had this funny habit. She’d state her opinion in the form of a question. She’d say, “I don’t really like the style of her hair – do you?” And then we were left with the option of either agreeing with her – or disagreeing with her. But we knew what answer we were supposed to choose! And if we disagreed, we knew there would be a debate about it until we came over to her side of the aisle. Sometimes, we’d agree with her just so we wouldn’t have the ensuing debate.

That example was a mild one, though. Mom would have strong opinions about everything – including the “heavy” subjects like politics and religion. And she was well-informed. She read books and newspapers and watched the news. So there were very few current events that mom hadn’t heard about.  And there were even fewer subjects she didn’t have a strong opinion about.

Nowadays, devastating hurricanes are beyond her grasp.

I wish I could go back and hear her state an opinion again. About ANYthing. I wish I could go back and cherish even those moments when mom and I disagreed – just because I’d know she was fully engaged in the conversation.

I wouldn’t even use the infected hangnail ruse.