Spring Cure: Week Three and Owen's Memories
Week Three of the Spring Cure. Here are the tasks:
- Vacuum, dust, and mop (wet or dry) throughout your home.
- Clean your entrance and any related closets.
- Arrange to have all repairs taken care of in the next three weeks.
- Declutter your entrance.
- Move all old mail, catalogs, and magazines to the Outbox.
- Look into what you would need to create a Landing Strip.
- Cancel any unused subscriptions.
- Identify cool rooms and warm rooms.
- Apply the 80/20 color rule.
- Cook two meals at home this week.
- Design an invitation for your housewarming.
Doable, doable.... We desperately need some kind of 'landing strip' as right now coats and backpacks go everywhere and mail seems to fly from the dining room table to the sideboard to everywhere in between. I had a plan for a small table for mail, etc and either a coatrack or coathooks on the wall in the corner to the left of the front door at the bottom of the stairs. We don't have any kind of entry per se---you're pretty much just plunged into the room. Unfortunately I could not convince Owen to take the dresser that I brought from my mother's house. It appears that he just has too many memories with his cheap Ikea dresser to let it go. Cleaning Owen's room was an adventure this weekend.
Me: Owen, what about that old cardboard shield from a birthday party several years ago? We can get rid of that, can't we...it's just been sitting on top of the bookshelves for the last several years.
Owen (with a look of shock on his face): MOM....that's something I'll always keep and when I go to college I'll bring it with me so I'll have memories of Eamon.
sigh. You can imagine how this all went, can't you?
Then I asked him to go through all his books on the bookshelves and pull out the ones he doesn't read anymore because a lot of them are too young (Green Eggs and Ham?) for him now. So he enthusiastically looked at all his books, pointing out favorite ones and chatting away. In the end, from the four shelves of books, he gave me two. The Giving Tree because it makes him sad and Mother Goose because, as he said, 'it creeps him out.' So what did I do? I took them both and put them on OUR bookshelves. Hell, I'm not getting rid of the Giving Tree and Mother Goose. We're really accomplishing a lot here, huh?
Anyway.....since I couldn't convince him to give up his Ikea dresser (who am I to rip memories away from my son?) it is now going into our little 'landing strip' area. It looks great but does not leave room for a coatrack or hooks. We only have one closet on the first floor of our house and it's in the bathroom. Yup. We do have hooks for coats by the backdoor. I guess I just need to clear those off and screech at the boys to hang up their coats. Hmmmm. Exciting things to ponder.
In other news I finally heard back from the Buddhist retreat center that had never sent me a receipt for the donation from Judi's estate. Woo-hooooo! Ernie's going to call about an appraisal on my mother's house and getting an estimate for a new electrical outlet that we've wanted for years. So....some forward momentum....forward momentum....and it feels good.