The Clean Up Begins

There was not one room in our house that was not completely trashed! "Stuff" everywhere. And the laundry...

Anyway, Butch and I started the "take down" on Saturday. I finished everything but the tree. We did that today. This year, the tree held up really well. Butch said he read a tip about putting maple syrup in the water of the second watering. It worked! We had very few dropped needles and the tree was still soft and perky (hmmm, sounds a little like my "girls").

I've found that there are things we do every year in conjunction with the "take down": cleaning out the refrigerator to dispose of all the holiday leftovers, cleaning out the cabinets to get everything back in order, sorting through the mammoth collection of overflowing bags in the pantry, and, last but not least, minimizing the number of cups/glasses/mugs in the beverage cabinet that have multiplied to epic proportions over the past year. Of course, we each have our favorites. I want to get rid of his and vice a versa. Butch has a particular cup for each type of beverage. His favorite gin and tonic glass is from Sandy's first dorm room. I would think that little guy could be retired after 17 years, but noooo. He has a manhatten glass, assorted travel coffee mugs, and 525,600 sports cups (blog candy for the first person to post where that number came from. Blog candy---little treat sent by blogger). I have 2 extra large insulated cups (granted they take up the room of 6 regular size cups, but this way, I don't have to refill very often) a favorite mug I use for hot tea and a small juice glass. We have another set of glasses that somehow found their way across the kitchen and into this cabinet. We can only guess that they migrated due to the "not enough clean glasses when 12 people use 4 a day". Add to that the sippy cups I keep on hand (and another that was left behind) and MIndy's favorite cups. Decisions had to be made.

We finally compromised---got rid of all the lids that we didn't seem to have cups for, got rid of the cups that were missing lids. We re-located the glasses that migrated. Now we each have our own shelf and one for the "public" glasses. This looks like it just might work.

Back to the laundry.