Ramblings.

Pamela has posted a walk down memory lane... at least for me, anyway! As I read over the list, I remembered most of them and most of the childhood memories associated with each of them. Come on, do you remember scrunching down your socks, Oregon Trail day at school (that's when computers were just starting to become popular!), or my personal favorite: Syke! My brothers, sisters, and I used to do that to each other: "Daddy's home, daddy's home! SYKE!" (I know you remember Michelle:D). Go on over and enjoy the walk...:)

I spent a big chunk of my day today cleaning. My goal was to do all the fall cleaning between today and Monday. I hit a few roadblocks that I wasn't planning on though. My sister and her family will be up at the end of this week (yay!) so I started on the spare bedroom. TWO HOURS later I finished organizing, cleaning, and throwing stuff away. Sheesh! My brother moved out of the house a YEAR AND A HALF ago; I think we can safely say the closet can be rid of his stuff!

Next I organized what we simply call "the open area". When our house was originally built back in the 30s or 40s, it was just a summer cottage so "the open area" was really the attic. Well sometime in the 70s they added three bedrooms and a bathroom down the hall from this room so it really can't be the attic anymore because we walk by it several times in a day! But when we moved from my grandfather's house 10 years ago, we moved all of his furniture and all of our furniture with us, so all the excess furniture that couldn't fit in the dining room and sitting room wound up in the open area.

Anyway, there was an extra chair in the spare room that I wanted to get out, since Mr. Bayley-Boo is going to need to sleep in a pack-n-play and there wasn't enough room for two chairs, one futon (opened) two nightstands, and a bookcase in the room! So I had to organize "the open area" in order to fit an extra chair out there.

Ai-yiy-yiy-yiy-yiy.

My dad is such a collector of everything that, literally, our house is one big pile after another. My room is the only room free of "piles". I try my best to keep clutter out of the kitchen and the sitting room. I'm the type of person who loves organization which I get from my dad. He loves organization too, and he says his piles are all *organized*! So I wait until "someday" when he'll have time to go through it all:). Every so often I'll even go through my stuff, just to make sure that I'm not holding onto anything unnecessary:D.

Anyway, in order to add another chair out there, I had to first rearrange all the furniture, books, papers, and everything else. Thankfully we have three closets that are under the slanted roof part so (shh! don't tell;) a few things went in there. I cannot even begin to imagine going through all this stuff someday. If I got tired after barely touching the surface in one room, I can't even imagine the whole house.

After I dusted, cleaned, and organized the room, I went downstairs to the sitting room for one thing and saw: more piles. My little organized heart couldn't stand it anymore, so I sat down and began to sort through it all. My dad built this massive bookshelf 30 years ago (I'm talking between 15-20 shelves and two cabinets underneath! It's a booklover's dream:D) but all this stuff was on the ledge, so I began to sort. In order to put those books from the ledge in one of the cabinets, I had to first clean out the cabinet. I found this box that said "very fragile", so I assumed it was from our move ten years ago. Here the poor box never got unpacked, but was just shoved in a hiding place. Inside the box I found two gorgeous clear pitchers that I never knew we had (I claim first dibs on them!) as well as these really old dishes I recognize belonging to my grandmother and great-grandmother. It was like going yard saling or Goodwill bargain hunting without spending any money:D. So I set one of the dishes away for my hopechest and I'm gonna ask my mom what she wants to do with the rest. I wouldn't feel too bad giving them away because we already own 4 or 5 complete sets of dishes;). No guilt here!

After I was done with the bookcase, I turned my attention to the big record player table. Folks, I am not exaggerating when I say we are the owners of five of these antiques. Tiffany can confirm this! And the kicker is that only one of them works... the rest are there in hopes of one day getting them repaired, I think. We've had them for years, so I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, on top of this rare commodity, I found a huge (what else?!?!) pile of childrens' books. It was at this moment that my creative juices kicked in. I sorted the books into 5 piles: mine, Mary, Phil, Michelle, and books that were given to all of us kids. I don't know why, but I didn't find any for Tom. Strange. Hmm. Anyway, since Michelle only comes up from Florida once or twice a year, the idea popped in my mind to give her the pile of books belonging to her as a child, give everyone else their books, and divide the group books up amongst the five of us. Brilliant! And it gets rid of one pile... yay!

Now I'm off to do some more cleaning... hopefully I don't encounter too many more piles along the way:).