Clean all the things!

How have your holidays been? Mine have been a lovely mix of sloth and good food, along with my usual post-Christmas frantic cleaning and reorganizing. All last week I hardly worked at all, and then I fell into the Christmas cheer. We visited with some of my husband’s family on Christmas Eve, and if they ever decide to go on a sunny vacation together, I’m thinking of tagging along because these people are FUN. Christmas Day we headed to my parents’ for a couple of days, which was lovely.

Usually my tree and decorations come down on Boxing Day, but since I was actually not home on Boxing Day, the annual CLEAN EVERYTHING fiesta waited until Sunday, when I had been home for approximately three minutes. I love Christmas and all its glorious sparkly decorations, but I also love that clean, uncluttered look too.

The house looked like this for a brief moment on Christmas morning, and then I started the cleaning process. My husband gave me the side-eye a little because I’m sure he thought I was going to start de-Christmassing, but no. Not on Christmas Day, no matter how tempting.

Yesterday I decided that just de-Christmassing wasn’t enough; I had to reorganize everything in the bathroom and hall cupboards. And honestly, it was pretty bad. There were a number of items I hadn’t used or gotten rid of: several shampoo bottles with 1/2 an inch of shampoo left in them, lip glosses that were discovered to be unflattering, and many bottles of expired medication. There was also a package of gigantic, extra-absorbent sanitary napkins that I had purchased for post-partum bleeding back in 2005, and then never used again, alongside a box of slim, light days tampons. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that no woman who has given birth vaginally is going to use slim, light days tampons. I think we can all admit that in those cases the feminine mystique takes a bit of a beating and those tampons are best left to others.

I also found a number of strange items in the hall cupboards, including a bottle of golden corn syrup. For one thing, I cannot remember ever buying corn syrup or even what I would have used it for. For another thing, it was far from golden; it was dark brown and sort of sludgy looking.

Today the big job was to reorganize my dresser – a big task, given that it was getting difficult to close the drawers properly. I was in the perfect mood to do it; if I didn’t LOVE an item, it went into the donation bag. At this rate I’m going to mow through the house by the time the kids go back to school. It’s a very satisfying process; I hope I don’t lose my ambition. NO HALF-MEASURES, NICOLE.

Speaking of binge-watching things, my husband and I have been watching Game of Thrones. He watched the whole thing last year, and I joined in around Season Four. Let me tell you, things make MUCH more sense when watched from the beginning. I was previously so confused and constantly texting my friend Hannah (HI HANNAH) questions about who was who, why was that guy like that, what’s with all the incest, and OMG ARE THOSE ZOMBIES? Finally, I understand – sort of.