Housekeeping Update

Now that the 31 Days of Housekeeping are over, I've pretty much stopped dead in my tracks. Well, OK, that's an exaggeration. I've done a little something almost everyday--but not the full blown routine every single day--which is what it takes to keep this place from overwhelming and paralyzing me (which leads to more mess, more overwhelm and more paralysis).

So, today, I vowed, I would do absolutely every little thing on the list and get caught up. Of course, getting caught up means doing more than what's on my little list; chiefly, more loads of dishes and more loads of laundry.

So, I weighed myself (distressing: the numbers really are trending upward.) Made my bed. Oops, forgot to swish and swipe the upstairs bath!

But I did manage the downstairs bath and did about three loads of laundry or so. I picked up most of the main floor. (The desk is still a mess.) Where I fell down, of course, is in doing the dishes.

Not to worry, though, I'll have them done before I hit "publish post." Honest.

What's left?
The fun stuff: the One Essential Task.

I thought it might be cleaning up the soffit now that the stenciling is done.


But no.

Then, the part for fixing the bathroom faucet was delivered. That came much more quickly than I'd expected. I thought I might get that done.


But no.

I suddenly remembered that I had purchased 2 bags of tulip bulbs yesterday-- 1/2 off. (Less than 24 hours in my possession and already I'd forgotten!) There had been another customer beside me when I'd been considering them and I'd asked her "What do you think, is it too late to plant them?"

"Not if you can dig a hole," she said.

I've always intended to have tulips encircle our flag pole. (We inherited it with the house.)


So, I marked out an encircling horseshoe with twigs and spray paint and felt very clever.

The ground was frozen.

Solid.

Daedalus (my husband, not his real name.) came and stood on the shovel. (I did too.)

But no.

So, I quickly changed my plans and decided to plant them in the boxes in the back yard. We amended two of them this year, so in order to leave the other two boxes free for working in next Spring that's where I decided to plant them.


Actually, I only got as far as planting one box (4'x 4') with one bag (28 tulips). The soil wasn't frozen solid--it was just frozen in big chunks. So, I did a lot of whacking with the shovel. Gardening at my house is not for wimps.


I also attached these house numbers to the boxes so we can keep track of them. (#1 & #3 were amended this year, an odd year, and #2 and 4 will be amended in even years. Of course, we came up with this genius plan after we'd already gone ahead and double dug the planting boxes: thus the weird order to the numbers.)

Now I've another reason to look forward to spring--and winter isn't even here yet.