Hour-a-Day April: Day Thirteen

Dorothy let me sleep in until eight this morning. Eight! I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get much cleaning in this morning, but Valerie slept in, too. That the one awesome thing about dreary, rainy days: My girls sleep in.

I finished clearing the floor of my bedroom, which was such an awesome feeling. I still need to put away some boxes, but otherwise, the floor is empty. I even vacuumed it.

The before picture, again, which I am increasingly glad that I took, because it's already hard to believe:


Day Thirteen:


I took a progress picture, because sadly, the floor's cleanness is a temporary state; for the rest of April, this clear floor will be used as a staging ground for other sorting projects. Like socks and underwear.



At some point in the past few years, I got lazy with socks. I had an "odd sock" box, where I could put mismatched socks that I wanted to hang onto in case their mates turned up. Then, one day, I got to the bottom of a basket of clean laundry, and rather than pair up the socks, I just dumped them all in the odd sock box, to sort later. Later never came, and I just kept adding to the odd sock box, until there were no pairs, just a big box of odd socks (with bras and underwear mixed in). My drawers were pretty much empty at that point, so I started dumping unmatched socks into the drawer, too. The only socks that were paired were the ones I didn't like, and when I went to put on socks, it would take me five minutes of digging through the mess to find two matching socks.

I emptied that box today, and organized my sock/underwear drawers. I threw out all the holey socks, and the terminally mismatched socks; I put the nice too-small bras in the donate box, and the worn-out ones in the trash. I only kept 11 "odd" socks, about half of which I think their mate is somewhere in my house, and the other half of which are the odd-numbered sock of some type of sock of which I have more than one pair.

Dorothy helped:


I have a lot of socks.

From here, I need to start looking up, onto surfaces: the desks, the dressers, the sewing table. I'm not sure I'll get to the walk-in closet before HADA is over, but at least it's not looking like a lost cause anymore. My donate/giveaway pile in the hallway is starting to get too big, so I think I might have to do a preliminary thrift store run. I've given a few things to specific people that I know can use them, but it's still growing more quickly than it's shrinking.

I got a few more things done today. I tidied up the living room and vacuumed it so that I can safely let Dorothy slither around without worrying about what she might find to put into her mouth (or worrying about how covered in hair she will be when I pick her up again - I swear, I shed worse than a cat). I took down the craigslist ad for the car so that I will stop getting emails about it. And I started in on my next bedroom floor sorting project - five bags of hand-me-downs of mixed gender in sizes newborn through 3T. I'm 1 1/2 bags into that project so far.

We went to a church potluck tonight, and I cooked the laziest possible thing - a box of frozen chocolate eclairs. So we had yummy, home-cooked food without me having to lift a finger. And no dishes to do afterward, either! Woot! Both girls fell asleep in the car on the way home. I wasn't sure if we should go tonight, because I'm always worried about how evening activities will mess with bedtime, but when it works out like that, it makes me want to go somewhere every evening!

I have a lot on the agenda tomorrow, and if I don't get in my hour first thing in the morning, it probably won't happen. I hope the timing works out, but if not, I'm totally counting some of today's time towards it, because I really kicked butt today. Have I mentioned lately how awesome this HADA thing is?

Day Thirteen tally: 30 minutes cleaning bedroom floor, 30 minutes sorting socks, 20 minutes tidying living room, 20 minutes sorting hand-me-downs. Total = 1 hour and 40 minutes.

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