Spring Cleaning In November

Merry, Merry, quite contrary... you read that right, I’m spring cleaning – it seems to be a running theme of late – out with the old, in with the new... and I could probably quote a few more standard ditties to start off this post, but I’ll spare you guys the furious eye rolls ;-)

I always get a wild hair to clean the house very thoroughly right around Halloween or just after – I know this is a spring thing, and I do the whole, throw open the windows and clean up bit in the spring, but I don’t deep clean and organize then, the way most people talk about because, as anyone with children can tell you, spring is too damn busy! I don’t know why it’s done in the spring, except people feel all energetic from the glorious weather... but really, side affect of that season is the addition of baseball and softball to already full schedules, spring break which means homebound and really bouncy kids for extended periods of time, and, egads, have you ever tried to keep three kids inside the house cleaning on a bright and sunny day? We’re not living in the same generation I grew up in. I can’t send them out the door to play. I have to go with them, which means.... Spring Cleaning in November.

Okay, so now you get my reasoning... the other thing is that as the weather turns and the kids are at school all day, the mess drives me nuts... plus, of course, I like the house really clean and tidy before starting the whole decorating for Christmas thing because if you try cleaning as you’re decorating it becomes a big nightmare...

Point? Point? There was a point around her somewhere... oh, yeah, organization.... The thing with this is, I’m not a naturally organized person, I’m one of those people who have to work at it. I have to make lists or I will forget to do things – I used to have a really good memory but somehow having to schedule three other people seems to have lost me some iq points in there somewhere.

So, with this fervent cleaning revolution going on in my house, it’s dripped into my writing... I’m actually cleaning out all my computer files and purging the dead issues to a file disk... holy cow... there’s not a crowded area of little needed or known writing odds or ends cluttering up my desktop, hee, hee... My desk itself is, gads, clean!!! You heard that right, no coffee ring, no dust behind the monitor, no scattered notes and stray hair bands... okay, a few stray hair bands but they add to the ambiance.

I even put fresh flowers on the piano next to my desk... All reds and oranges and yellows and they make me think of crisp apples and pumpkin spice... or maybe that’s the potpourri... anyway, my spring cleaning is about to take over my blog as well.. I’ve just purged a bunch of links – not that they weren’t great bloggers that I loved to visit, but a lot of them were abandoned blogs or just bloggers I don’t really visit much anymore. No offense to anyone removed – I use it as a handy reference to hit the blogs I like without having to search for them, the pr for the blogger is a nice added bonus I’m happy to help with, but really it’s a selfish thing... on the other hand, you know the links on my blog are ones I really enjoy myself.

There were a number of blogs I couldn’t part with, even though I don’t visit them much anymore. I’m thinking of arranging them into fiction writing and freelance writing, because I have a number of freelancers that I loved visiting and got great information from while I was ghosting, but haven’t really stopped in to see in a while...

Sigh... Jersey girl over there I kept up because I love her blog, but I can’t visit it because every time I do it shuts down my darn windows... Jersey, if you’re reading, I miss you.

If you’ve made it this far you realize that I didn’t really have a point... just a steady ramble... but we’ll end with a point just for the hell of it – how do you organize your life and your writing? Do you need a clean environment or does the muse take over ever in a pig sty? Do you spring clean other than in the spring? (That last one’s just geared to make me feel like I’m not the only freak)