Elizabeth’s Journal

Quick—Must Get Organized!

Ever since I started feeling better with this pregnancy, I have been a whirlwind of activity in our home. This sure is a different experience than when I was pregnant with Jonathan! Now I know first-hand what’s coming, which is why I’m in such a hurry to clean up these things that have been languishing for months or years. I don’t think I’ve filed a single bill or official document since we moved into this house 4-1/2 years ago. They are all piled up in our bedroom closet!

So, over the last 9 days or so, I’ve done the following: put up more bookshelves in our bedroom and moved stuff out of the guest room onto the new shelves (my husband struggled with the concept of more bookshelves for less than five minutes—I was proud of him for accepting the situation so gracefully!); reorganized and cleaned the bookshelves in the guest room; cleaned out the guest room closet; winnowed out Jonathan’s toys from his area in the den; cleaned the freezer, the junk drawer in the kitchen, the upper and lower cabinets next to the refrigerator, the drawer full of kitchen gadgets, made a dent in our master closet, paid the bills, gotten new rugs & towels for the master bath and new rugs for the guest bath, cleaned out the linen closet (which also holds all my candles, so you can imagine what that was like), organized part of the utility room . . . I have discovered an amazing ruthless streak in myself to recognize when I am unlikely to use something again and to just throw it away instead of leaving it at the back of a cabinet or drawer “just in case”. Must have something to do with having children, limited time, and limited space; I was certainly never this way prior to Jonathan.

Joy & Brian, Dale’s parents, arrive tomorrow afternoon for their much-anticipated fall visit. We are all very excited about their return and look forward to the next few weeks—they’ll be here until 5 December. Jonathan woke up this morning and said, “Dad’s parents are coming tomorrow!”