Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Spring Cleaning the Paper Mountains & Other Resistant Messes

I've been bitten by the spring cleaning bug. I can no longer sit and relax surrounded by the piles of stuff that accumulate everyday when the kids come home.
What is all that stuff? My sons come home with reams of paper everyday. Some are worksheets, some are notices, but most are useless. At least now I feel like they have some purpose since I can shred them and use them in the guinea pigs cage.

I spent a good portion of yesterday evening in front of the paper shredder while the boys ran around the house bringing me piles of paper to go through. The boys thought it was a game and really loved running through the house, dropping papers off with me and then running to put books on bookshelves. Jim was certainly shocked by the progress when he got home. In truth, I was too. Its amazing what a difference I can make when I get moving. The trick now is to keep the momentum going. Everytime the kids come home, or the mail gets brought in there's another opportunity for a pile to be created.

Of course the piles of my projects are still a big problem that I haven't begun to conquer yet. I think I've come up with some empty drawer space to help with this problem compliments of my daughters and their recent room reorganization efforts. I just have to make sure the girls don't need it anymore.

Jim's working late all this week and I'm hoping to suprise him with the lack of project piles tonight. Here's my plan of action. Once dinners in the oven, I'll make some coffee , put on some Steely Dan, tell the boys its a game (the girls are too old to fall for that trick) and hope for the best.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Katie,
I've been enjoying your blog for some time now. I do want to make one suggestion in regards to your paper shredding, though. Please consider wearing a cheap dust mask when shredding large quantities, and especially when transferring the shreddings to (and from) the critter cage. Paper dust is very fine and can irritate the lung lining. (Shredding 2 garbage bagfuls in a couple days gave me bronchitis-like symptoms that lasted for almost 2 weeks!)

Chile

Katie said...

Thanks for the tip!