Spring Cleaning 101

Once again I have allowed my blog to take a backseat to all that has been going on in my life. And that's okay. I realized that I get uncomfortable when my blog begins to take on a life of its own and starts to control me. No, no, no, dear nourish your soul blog.  I am the boss of my destiny and I will write when I feel the desire, the need, the urge.  Now don't get me wrong, dear blogging friends. I do care about what you have to say. I do love to read your words and check out your photos and find out how life is treating you. I do care. And of course, I want people to read my blog ~ after all, isn't that why we create blogs in the first place ? But my menopausal  personalities  personality has decided that it is time to get this house in order. And I mean a top to bottom, attic to basement, corner to corner, clean sweep. I mean the deep thorough cleaning which does not allow for sweeping things under the rug. And so it began... innocently enough.

I started pulling items out of the kitchen cabinets. My 11 month old granddaughter Olive actually inspired the cleaning of the kitchen cabinets since that is her favorite place to explore. She recently came across this ~

 and stared at me with bewilderment. I tried to explain to her that there is a logical reason for having a gazillion pepper shakers in the cabinet. I won't name any names but someone has a salt addiction and since I don't want the title of nagging mother-in-law I keep my mouth closed about the dangers of too much sodium in one's diet ...and now I must apologize to my mom for mocking her when I was younger for collecting dozens of empty peanut butter containers and allowing them to clutter up her cabinets. In the midst of all this cleaning I realized I had become my mother. I took a break from my cleaning so I could process this realization.

I also tackled the ever growing piles and piles and more piles of books in my house. I love to read. I love to read the old-fashioned way by holding a real book in my hands ~ no automatic high tech book machine for me ~ I love to smell the book and feel the pages between my fingers. But my book collection is a wee bit out of control so I weeded through so I could take some to our local library. These are the books I decided to give away...                                                   

   ...notice any  particular theme among them ?

I couldn't bring myself to give any of the others away. I know what you are thinking...hoarder ! No, I'm not. I just love my books. And there is a logical explanation why I have all of those pepper shakers. I took a break from my cleaning so I could read 'School of Essential Ingredients'. It is a great read for the beach or if you are trying to escape from cleaning.

I decided to tackle the pantry which can be a scary proposition since there is often a forgotten potato lurking somewhere...there are few things that smell worse than a rotten potato. I wore my protective cleaning gear to protect myself from the overgrown dust bunnies and entered with caution. I tried to organize the canned goods alphabetically but lost interest with that by the time I was up to the letter 'C'. I realized that I could probably make enough pasta to feed our entire town...does spaghetti get stale ? On the very top shelves in the pantry I found these...

                                                                                  

My husband found these in the basement of an old house he bought years ago ~ a true fixer upper. I don't know quite what to do with these gems but one thing is certain ~ I am not going to sample any of them. So back to the top of the pantry shelf they went ~ to sit until the next time I get into a cleaning frenzy.

The desk and its drawers are one of my favorite items to clean out. It is like taking a walk down memory lane...and I sit down to read old birthday cards, love letters, and pictures.  I laugh, I smile, and sometimes I even cry. This whole spring cleaning routine is exhausting...physically and mentally. I open one last drawer in the desk to find ~

and I decide that I have done enough cleaning for one year day and I sit down to color my world and nourish my soul.