Decluttering

On Sunday, we had temperatures of -7 C degrees, so in the end I decided NOT to start hanging my outdoor Christmas decorations. Instead I made up some more Miracle cleaner to replenish my spray bottles. I disinfected my kitchen counters. I made up another batch of homemade Taco seasoning and my Ten Things Farm chicken seasoning because I was out of both. I did two loads of laundry and hung them up inside to dry. They have since been put away. And then, even though I told you I finished the twelve Christmas projects that I set out to do....I  finished another one.

Yesterday's temperatures were mild, so I took advantage and went outside to string up my lights. I have them on timers and I checked them last night to make sure they are all working, but I won't turn them on until after the first of December. I have far fewer decorations than past years because I got rid of a lot of them after Christmas last year. I also sold some at the yard sale this year. I did put out my little fake evergreen tree (made by wrapping a rope light and garland around a tomato cage). I have that up on the "table" on my front verandah. I didn't want to put hooks into my brand new front stoop, so I just wrapped the Christmas lights around and through the railings. Since I do have hooks on my fence and my front verandah, I strung both garland and lights from those. I took night-time photos, but they really did not turn out. I will have to take daytime pictures, I guess.  In the afternoon, I made up a "Thinking of you"  card and wrote a message inside. I wrote birthday wishes in another card for  one of my grand daughters, and I wrote another notecard for my mother. I walked them to the post office and picked up my mail. There was another card from my 7 year old grandson. I was going to make up the packaging for the card sets I made a few weeks back, only to discover that I had not put any birthday sentiments inside the cards. Fortunately, I keep a binder of card designs and stock sentiments on hand, so it was just a matter of printing them out on a sheet of printer paper and inserting them inside the cards.

 My verandah. This is the entrance people use to my house.

My new front stoop and the front of the house. The milder temperatures took away most of the snow

Today I planned to clean my computer room.The big job was to dust off the desk and the book shelves on the wall above the desk. At the end of the night, neither is done. It took me HOURS to file everything away in their designated locations. (I am thinking of you Bless)  I shredded 5 grocery bags of papers so far. I decided not to open the proverbial can of worms and just get all the rest into my filing box to take care of in January. I have manuals for appliances I know longer own. But I remembered that last year when I started in this same room, I spent days sorting through tools and hardware and organizing the lot so I would know where to find stuff. I did not want to fall into that trap again. Tomorrow, when I have natural daylight again, I will tackle the dusting and washing. At least the big job of putting things away where they belong, is finally done.