Just a note…I know I promised you the next installment in my mom’s story but, I forgot details and must meet with my brother to get them. Might see him this w/e. Thank You for faithfully looking. Hope you find this entertaining!
January always inspires me to clean my house. Oh, not the weekly cleaning, dusting etc., but the, ‘wipe down the walls, (does dust settle on the side of a wall), take everything off the walls wash, and decide if it will go back up, take every dish, knick-knack, tchotchke, paper, and book from every nook-and cranny, and wash it!!!
I’m not sure if every household did this, but that’s the way I was raised. Twice a year!! Funny thing is, that first year I was married I made an attempt to do this with my new husband. He was very cooperative, until he washed the wall. He called me from another room to look at the water. ” Look at that filthy water’, he emphatically stated.
It was crystal clear! “Well, wash the wall and it will be!” I hurled back. “I DID wash-all four of them!” I was flabbergasted! When I did this at mom’s every year the water was a brownish yellow after one wall!
“Do you really think we need to do this?” Exasperated hubby exclaimed. I gave him a big kiss for his efforts and saw the wisdom in his question. “No, I guess we don’t.” It began to dawn on me that my mom and stepdad were heavy smokers and smoked in our house! As a result, everything was coated with a gross layer of nicotine and other toxic chemicals that we washed off twice a year! I thought about that conversation so many times in the almost 50 years that we have been married and here are my ‘take-aways’.
Before you do something ‘the way you have always done it’ , STOP and think about it and ask yourself a few questions. Why am I doing this? Does it make sense to do this anymore? Is it necessary to do anymore?
Often, we get into a ‘same-old-same-old’ rut, and we need someone to push us out of it. Now, I am not saying that my house did not need to be cleaned, I’m saying that not everything that I thought needed to be cleaned a certain way, just needed to be examined. We stopped washing the walls and just dusted them. I saw a womans home once who neglected to dust those walls for years. It looked like she had a border of cobwebs around her ceiling! Nope, can’t have that!
Since January is purge month, and it’s almost over I might add, I also purge my photos on my phone. I ran across this photo you see above. It is the ‘productive work’ I was able to do from home while we were in the lockdown for covid. I do hope you will go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and get yourself a copy…maybe you have a friend or 2 and will lift their spirit by also picking up a copy for them! After all, January purge month is over tomorrow, and LOVE month begins!
Talk soon!
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