At Home in Wyoming

A Time To Clean

We were surprised this morning to see about four inches of snow that fell last night...coating my bare lilac branches with what looks like bunches of white cotton balls...now I am so glad that I haven't packed up the Christmas decorations yet...I love looking at the outside wreaths heavy with snow.

Reindeer adorning the kitchen fireplace (which is actually an old mantel that I scavenged...and put a space heater in to help deal with kitchen drafts) that are about to say 'good-bye' until next Christmas...the storage box awaits them!

 

 I am not an organized person.  Let me amend that, I am the LEAST organized person that I know!  So come the start of a new year, I trot out my new datebook, and try to start sketching out a framework for the new year.

While I was doing that, I thought I would share with you an idea about Spring cleaning that worked for me.  If you are an organized homemaker, just tune this one out.  I am speaking to those of you that get easily sidetracked...

When I married and moved to Wyoming, we lived in a tiny little town of about 400 people (mostly my husband's relatives).  Almost all were farmer's wives...and all kept house in a very traditional way.  Each spring their houses were turned inside out...carpets were vacuumed, curtains were washed, walls were scrubbed, furniture was shampooed, windows were washed...well, you get the picture.  The men were better off staying in the barn for those few weeks...spring cleaning was done with an almost religious fever!

And I tried that...but it seemed silly to me to have a house not comfortable to live in for weeks at a time...plus cleaning in Spring, right before you open the windows for the summer for all the dirt to blow in was sort of a waste of time.  I tried doing Fall cleaning...but it collided with harvesting the garden, so that didn't work.  I went to the Library and actually got books about setting up housekeeping and your whole life with 3x5 cards...until my husband noticed that I spent all my time making cards and no time left to clean!  Finally, I stumbled on a routine that worked for me

When I get my datebook the first of every year, I write down which room/rooms I will clean each month.  For instance, January is the downstairs bathroom and the mudroom, February is the dining room, and so on.  Some rooms are tiny and I can do two in one month.  The kitchen I always schedule two months for because I have to wipe out the shelves, etc.  Then, during the month as I do my regular housecleaning, I sort of divide up the deep cleaning chores.  One week I may take down the curtains and wash the windows, another week shampoo the carpet or wash the walls...whatever needs done in that one room during that one month.  I try to schedule the rooms that need the most work during the slower months...I will not tackle the living room during the busy holiday season, or the month we plant or harvest the garden, for example. 

I have tried all the complicated ways, but for an unorganized homemaker like me...this simple way works the best!  DLB

 

 

Too Much Stuff!

After a few weeks of cold weather, Cody is warming to the 70's and 80's for the rest of the week.  There is still time to brush those fall leaves off the table and enjoy meals outside again...

I can remember the day that my parents told me that my grandmother (we called her Nanny) and grandfather (Grampy) were going to move from the house that they lived in ever since I could remember, into a house much smaller.  I remember Nanny saying that her house was too much to take care of at this stage in her life. 

Now, I loved that house.  I can still see the swing under the apple tree in the back yard, the deer that would come through checking out the garden.  I remember that the bottom floor of that house always smelled like apples...I can smell it in my mind to this day.  I remember thinking that they were making a terrible mistake, because some things were just worth working for.  I thought maybe the move was because Nanny had such exacting standards of housekeeping...

Now, I am in my 50's and I know better.  Nanny must have been pooped!  Although we did not use the word back then, Nanny and Gramps were downsizing!

Somewhere in your 50's, when your children are on their own and it is just your husband and yourself, you get tired of caring for belongings...and rooms...that you no longer use.  You start to realize that life on this earth is not endless, and do you really want to spend your remaining time and precious energy cleaning and caretaking things that you probably won't use anymore?  In Ecclesiastes 3:1 the Bible says,

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:"

and verse 6 states:

"A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;"

Guess what, folks?  I think I have hit my time to cast away.  Each day I have a goal, and that is to fill up a plastic trash bag with belongings that I no longer find to be useful or beautiful, and I am giving away what is still usable, and throwing away what is not.  I am ruthless...if I have not used that vase in 5 years than it is history.  The wooden rocker with the broken arm that I thought maybe I would get fixed is gone, along with kitchen gadgets that I never used and books that I cared to read once, (and once was enough). Stuff that I have been storing for the kids I am in the process of packing off to them.

I can't tell you how good this is making me feel.  I am bringing order to closets and drawers, and I have room now for items that I treasure or still use.  I feel lighter somehow...probably the way Nanny did when she downsized and knew that she was no longer the caretaker of stuff that no longer fit her life.  Now there is more space in my life, more time to spend having coffee with a friend, or watching my grandchild.  I am not ready to downsize to the point where I sell this creaky old house...yet... but the day will probably come when I realize that, like Nanny, it is just too much for me.  And that doesn't scare me the way it used to.  There is a time 'for every purpose under heaven'.

All this to say to you younger woman readers...the seasons in your life will change.  Change is hard for a lot of people, especially me.  But when you embrace the change, it can be freeing.  And a lot less cluttered!

I am excited about my 'time to cast away'.  If you get a chance, read Ecclesiastes 3 and try to figure out what season you are in, going into...or heading out of.  And know that whatever the season, God will be there with you.  Everything else in your life will change, but God never does.  His constancy will anchor you in the shifting sands of the seasons of your life.  DLB