Cleaning

Somehow, I have gotten suckered into doing a major fall cleaning.  Although it seems to be more a matter of throwing stuff away than actually cleaning.

Because no one actually puts things away in this house, stuff just get thrown somewhere, anywhere, guaranteed to be not where it belongs.  So last year I began the task of just trying to sort the mess out.  Stuff that goes to the sunporch, goes there, perhaps not where it belongs, but closer than where it was.  Same for everything.

Now that I have finally gotten some separation, I started sorting everything that is alike, into piles of the same stuff.  So suddenly, instead of half a box of baking soda, I find I have five boxes, three of which are partially used.  Same goes for everything!  The worst is sandwich bags - eleven partially used boxes!

So, trying to now consolidate alike items into fewer containers and then i started noticing expiration dates!  Yeah, i found a brownie mix which dated back to when I bought this house!  It never got used because it never was put where it belonged in the first place!  So, two thirty gallons trash bags of severely out of date food items and the shelves are now starting to look bare!

I am still far from done, but it is a good start.  Now I wonder if I can get my daughters whom moved out to pick up the last of their items?

And the same is true of my mind as well.  As I am working on my book (now at chapter 5) I am finding quite a bit of baggage I have been carrying all of these years.  It surprised to me to learn how angry I still am at the US Army for what they did to me.  It angered me at how easily they had played me.  It made me reconsider quite a bit about my life - how much good I did miss because I was stupid and how much evil I was forced through because I was equally stupid in that area as well!  They were the adults and knew exactly what they were doing.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!  As one of my daughters would say.

But, that is all water long gone under the bridge.  Situations where God, as the final judge, gets to punish those whom preyed upon innocence for their own gain.  Of course, that innocence was what allowed me to come to God as well, because I was stupid and really needed Him to pull me from the fire I suddenly found myself in.  Yeah, He did, in ways I could never have foreseen at the time.

Now how to do the same in my little book ... ?