All by myself

Today I am all by myself. #1 is at Grandma's house for the last day in her three day stay. #2 is at school and Hubby is away traveling in the great wilds of Upper Ontario, Canada for his work. So far I have cleaned up one attic and sorted through some of the seasonal storage in that one. Boy do I have a lot of Halloween stuff for this year. I always pick up some decorations after the holidays to add for the next year and store it away. I also discovered that for some unknown reason I put a bunch of empty boxes in the lower attic. No wonder it looked so full. Some day I hope to have a subfloor in the entire lower attic. Right now only about 40% is floored for storage. I'd also like to insulate the heck out of there but that will have to wait for at least one more year. We are working on drywall for the kids new bedrooms and play area so that takes priority. Home renovations can be such a treat. The mess, the frustration, the emergency trips to the hardware shop for forgotten and critical supplies (drywall screws, anyone?), it makes me wonder if we will ever be done up there. The target is Christmas for drywall and beadboard in the bedrooms with hardwood floors. I wonder which target item will change first. I can't wait to get them in their new rooms. The original rooms were very small and only one of them had a heat register. I have high hopes for the finished products. Hubby is really quite handy around the house and I can wield a mean paint roller.

So what exciting things will I do with myself for the next 3.5 hours of alone time? Laundry, load dishwasher, clean bathrooms, mop kitchen, the list of things to do goes on and on. I think I will mop later, toss in a load of laundry soon, load the dishwasher and get some general picking up done. I am also amazed at the general level of cleaning to be done when you have kids and pets. There must be some really scary mathematical formula for this. It must involve calculus which I never really got the hang of. Something like the square footage of the house times the number of small creatures (kids and pets)raised to the 42nd power divided by number of hours in the day less sleep time of pets ( we all know kids don't sleep so much as recharge their batteries quickly) and somewhere is a coefficient of the times needed for other things (cooking, travel, nervous breakdowns, ER visits, and searching for car keys last seen clutched in small hand headed to the toy box). I haven't even figured on the complex stuff yet. But that is the probable formula for house work. Also something about the size of yard, quantity of rainfall for depth of mud tracked over what distance of the house. Yep, I'm blogging to procrastinate. I've gone to great websites which promise little steps to a cleaner house but no joy. I'm obviously ADD- definitely without the hyperactivity (I wish I was a bit more hyper- maybe I'd get more done in a day) I get side tracked from the little steps and then forget it- I'm done. My problem is I'm a bit of a packrat and I get bored quickly. Once I'm bored my mind wanders and soon my feet follow. In my family we refer to it as "Oh look, a chicken". There is a long story about a person(probably me) who is going on and on about a topic of interest only to get totally sidetracked and lose the entire train of thought upon seeing a chicken out the window. I'm pretty sure it's just an analogy since I grew up in the city. Long story short- new thought, new action while abandoning the old mid stride. Happens to me all the time. Add a fair dose of impatience and it's a nightmare.

So I'm setting the timer for 10 minutes and then going to quit blogging and start working. I think I'll start with laundry and go to the mopping. Then when the mopping is done I can load the dishwasher, move wet laundry to dryer and start a new load. I got a new washer and dryer about a month ago. The old guys just started dying and finally the washer decided not to spin or rinse anymore. I really loved my Asko set but they were very small so we went with an LG set which are almost 2x the size. They work great and I'm very pleased with them. If Asko made larger sizes I never would have left them. I loved that washer and the fact that it only hooked up to the cold water, had an on board heater up to 205 degrees, and was very water conscious (good for our septic!!) while spinning out most of the water so they could dry very quickly. I'm getting used to the fact that the new set is much larger than the old and leaves less room on top for folding and the basket. Eventually the laundry room will get overhauled and who knows what changes will be made but I'll be wanting enough room for the basket to fit under whatever shelves we replace these with.

Oops- timer going off- must work now. Take care.