Cleaning

Most people start the holiday season with shopping or decorating. At our home we started with cleaning and rearranging furniture. There were a number of valid reasons for the rearranging and cleaning, but I admit it was not what I planned when I crawled out of bed yesterday.

It all started with the Christmas tree, of course. Apartment dwellers all have the same problem. Where to put the tree? Then if they have limited space to begin with, something must be moved...relocated to another room...thrown out...you get the drift?

My daughter spent eight hours in a car on what should have been a five hour trip. She had plenty of time to work out the rearrangements in her mind. Now the execution was a tad different. We started the day with a LOT of measuring. Part of the rearranging was the moving of hundreds of books when we moved the bookcases.

I have long wanted to move those bookcases out of their dark corner, but freely admit the shifting of so many books was a daunting thought. With the help of my granddaughters, we emptied the double and in places, triple booked shelves, sorted the books and reshelved them after the house hunk and the son-in-law moved the very heavy bookcases. That took most of the day.

But wait! Once they were moved, other stuff had to be moved! Rugs had to be vacuumed, rolled and shifted. Pictures had to be moved. And it all went on and on and on...

By eight o'clock everyone was ready to be finished. And we were. Then it was a matter of feeding the flock, baths or showers and off to bed. I admit I really like the new arrangements. The entire apartment has a lighter, airier feel to it. Not to mention there is now wall space for my framed covers and the few Christmas items we have that have languished in the storage boxes for the last few years.

There's just onnnnnnnnne thing. We still don't know where we're going to put the tree. Sigh.

anny