Crowded

The end of the semester is nigh, and of course that means that Everything will happen in the next ten days, if it didn't already happen in the last three.

The plan was to close on the new house, paint the master bedroom a single color (currently it has alternating walls of maroon and olive), then have the carpets cleaned.  Next, we'd start moving things over.  As we would empty a room at the rental, I would clean it.  When the whole house was empty and clean, I'd mop the floor that needs mopping, and call Chem Dri to clean the carpeted part.  I planned to get into the shower and scrub the water spots off, and even use a toothbrush to get the floor grout clean.  I figured I'd have to do an edge trim on the lawn, and do some weeding in the front yard.  I was planning on giving our thirty days' notice on June 1 and once we were out, they could do the cleaning from that point forward.

But no.  The landlord jumped the gun and called a real estate agent, and now we're being pressured for a move-out date.  The agent wants to start showing people through the house.  I'm having to dust and vacuum and pick up numerous times instead of just once so that people can come through and not be distracted at the state of this place.  I don't want to even think about the craft room.  

Meanwhile, Sis and her husband have bought a house and were in the midst of a remodel when she had to have emergency surgery on one of her feet.  Once she gets out of the hospital, she'll be in a wheelchair for several weeks, but the real topper is that Bro-In-Law will be out of town on a job that he can't put off starting Sunday.  Sis will come home from the hospital to an empty house that needs to be packed up for moving.  Both of them are frantic, and I don't blame them.  A month ago I could have taken off and spent a week or two helping out.  Another month from now, I could take off and help.  Right now, for these two weeks at least, I'm pretty much stapled to Here and it's making me crazy trying to think of how I can manage to be in two places at once.

Anyway, today I started by doing things that need to be done anyway, but won't fill my living room with boxes prematurely.  I cleaned out the bathroom cabinet.  Since I had no money during graduate school, I developed the unfortunate habits of saving hotel soap and shampoo bottles, recycling plastic, and procrastination.  As a result, I have five years' worth of little half-filled bottles, or even big ones, waiting to be rinsed and recycled.  Well, that's done now.  I cleared out all kinds of nonsense.  Tomorrow, I'll tackle the two highest shelves in the kitchen cabinets, which are full of things that we don't use often, and possibly my bedroom dresser.

When we moved from Way Out West to here, I jettisoned a bunch of stuff that we weren't using or that could be recycled.  Looking around me now, I note that we haven't added very much to our current stuff.  Whenever I have been tempted to acquire something, I stop and ask myself, "How often will you use that?  Where exactly do you plan to put it?" and if I don't have a good answer immediately, I don't get the item.  I even use this tactic for yarn, and for fiber, but the craft room still looks like a Michael's store explosion.