Today was my first day of my vacation and I did what I bet about half of you do/would do on your first day of vacation, too:  I CLEANED HOUSE.  Okay, first I slept in, but when I got up and out of bed, the first thing that came to mind as being my Task For The Day was serious cleaning of the house.  Dusting.  Vacuuming.  Putting all those things that have been put not quite where they belong actually back in their correct places.  AWESOMENESS.

There was a brief interlude toward the beginning of my cleaning quest when my fantastic husband took our Miele vacuum apart to figure out why it wasn’t working.  Turns out the problem could have been fixed by replacing a $100 part OR by putting in a $1.50 rubber washer.  Guess which one we did?  Woo!  $1.50 fix!  And nobody lost an eye to the crazy spring in the cord reel mechanism!  WIN!

So Justin fixed our vacuum and I went absolutely to town on the cleaning.  I dusted, I mopped, I finally got the bedding off the sofa bed that’s been on there for months and months, I dragged all the random stuff that’s been piling up at the bottom of the stairs piled up in my office where I can figure out what to do with it all, I finally strung the Christmas light up the banister of the stairway, and, happy day, I vacuumed!  The vacuum has been broken since before we got our Christmas tree.  This place has been in serious need of cleaning.

I finally stopped when it just wasn’t as much fun anymore, which was maybe 4 or 5 hours of cleaning?  I’m not sure.  But the living room, dining room, kitchen, stairway, and bedroom are looking awesome!  And tomorrow I’ll tackle my office and laundry and getting stuff back up into the attic and maybe pull some of the leaves out of the bushes in the front yard.  I’m not totally sure yet.  I still can’t find the stupid key to the storage closet outside, so I can’t get to the rakes or big trash bags.  And we have been looking all over the place for that dang key!  It’s getting seriously annoying.

Justin thought I was a little crazy because I wanted to clean and I didn’t mind that he wasn’t doing any cleaning to help.  He did help (awesomely) fixing the vacuum and helping take care of the light/fan fixture in the living room.  And tomorrow he’s going to help with laundry and he’ll clean the bathrooms (I hate cleaning bathrooms) and getting stuff into the attic.  But it felt SO GOOD getting the house clean again!  It’s like all this static noise is gone and I can think about other things.  I don’t look in the living room and see how much the end table needs dusting and that there’s bedding on the bed and all the pine needles on the floor.  Instead, I’m thinking about all the mess in my office right now, and how there’s paperwork that needs to get addressed and boxes that need to go into the attic and handwash clothes that need to get washed.  I’ve reduced the mess that I need to think about down to just a handful of places and that’s such an enormous relief I don’t think I can explain it.

After tomorrow, the mess should be small enough that I won’t have any of that static at all and I’ll be able to focus on other things — like getting ready to see everybody over the holiday!

Our neighbors are having a party tonight — I can hear loud bass music pulsing through the walls and people chatting outside.  Justin just went to the grocery store to buy a frozen pizza for dinner.  I’m sitting on the recliner in his office typing this in my pajamas, freshly showered after all that cleaning.

It’s been a wonderful day and I’m looking forward to a continuation of the wonderful for the next two weeks!!