A Response to Advice From Mom

I received a new message from Mom today:

I checked the blog and was flattered that you thought my note was good enough to post. However you left off the last and most important sentence....Ok, now get serious and sort out what you don't absolutely need to survive. I know you don't want me to come over there and clean your room! You know I clean rooms with a trash bag! By the way, I recall that your boys (and probably you too) brought home some rocks from your recent holiday. Rocks are heavy. Get rid of them!

So sorry I lost the last line, it wasn't intentional, I promise! So lets look at the new message shall we? Lets start with this line:

"I know you don't want me to come clean your room!"

Well yes, actually, I do. Would you please? How soon can you get to the airport? I will have a ticket waiting. And while you are cleaning could you please clean the boys rooms and maybe the living room, oh and the dining room too? I will clean the kitchen, I like my pots scratches dents and all.

Then there is this:

"You know I clean rooms with a trash bag."

Good I will buy the bags! Is there a particular size or brand you prefer? Will Hefty do? I think they carry that brand at the base.

And finally there was this:

"By the way, I recall that your boys (and probably you too) brought home some rocks from your recent holiday. Rocks are heavy. Get rid of them!"

Maybe you shouldn't have let me take that geology course way back when 'cause I like rocks. We are are going to allow the boys to keep a few fossils each, with a weight limit of a couple of pounds per kid, then the rest gotta go. Some one is going to be very puzzled some day to find iron pyrite and ammonites in Frankfurt.


Update on cleaning: I know most people could care less how much junk I managed to get rid of today, but it makes me feel like I have accomplished something to put the numbers out there.

Today was books. First let me say, "My name is Shannon and I am a book-aholic" and before you fire off a new e-mail Mom the only person I know with more books than me, is you. Apparently this is a hereditary condition.

So anyway books, two large standard FS issue bookshelves full to the top, two folding bookshelves from Target, and two smaller bookshelves, plus two small closets holding the over flow from the bookshelves. We got books people! Five of the six of us are confirmed book-a-holics. Dakota cleaned his shelves not long ago and I was impressed how many books he got rid of, until today that is. I found all the books that used to be in his room in the boys rooms and on my bookshelves. They weren't gone, just relocated. Brat! I went through every book in the house one at a time. It took hours, hours and hours and lots of chocolate and cappuccino.

I found three lost library books from school, a couple of duplicate books, a book I borrowed from a friend and never gave back, a bunch of board books for toddlers, piles of magazines and a handful of books that I have no interest in reading again, ever. There were also more than a few books that were beyond being taped back together so these were condemned to the recycle bin along with piles of papers from school, out dated catalogs, odd pieces of crushed oragami, and German junk mail.

Totals from today:
Books to be returned, donated, or dumped at the books swap: 86 pounds!
Magazines to be dumped at the field house so someone else can enjoy them: 55 pounds!
Books, papers and assorted junk tossed in recycle bin: 44 pounds!
For a grand total of (drum roll please) 185 pounds WooHoo!

Here are the books and magazines we are getting rid of minus the ones I tossed in the recycle bin. Even I don't generally take pictures of trash.


In case you are wondering we still have plenty of books left.

more books

and even MORE books

And No Dave that doesn't mean I am going to quit ordering from Amazon. In fact if you look carefully the paperbacks are piled up by author so now I know which books I am missing from which series, I am already working on my shopping list for when I visit Barnes and Noble or Borders or Half Price Books this summer. Those ORs should probably be ANDs because I am so totally going to all three. Is that a bad thing?