A Cleansing

I spent all day Saturday and Sunday cleaning my house. This was not just a normal cleaning, I have been doing this for 2 reasons. 1 that I am having back surgery in a week. I won't be able to clean for weeks afterwards and of course I will have people in my house helping me and it has to be clean..haha!
The other reason is because of my divorce and Joey moving out. I need to go through and divide everything.
This has been an awesome cleansing is so may ways...
I started in my bathroom throwing away so many things. I think of my self as a really clean, neat almost anal person when it comes to my house. I am still amazed at what you can accumulate in 8 years of living in the same house.

Then I moved to the kitchen. I emptied every cupboard, every drawer and pantry...My kids thought I had lost my mind and told me as much. I scrubbed every inch of my kitchen for the last 2 days. My hands are sore and raw from scrubbing. I reorganized what I was keeping. Honestly, I had way too much stuff. There was enough for me to keep what I wanted and for Joey to not have to buy anything with him moving out.

As I went through this I was reminded how much I love to bake. As I cleaned and refolded the aprons that I have for me and my girls, I was reminded of all the Saturday and Sunday mornings we used to spend baking. Most of the time we would take the goodies we had baked to neighbors.

I looked through all of my cookbooks, many of them friends had given me as Christmas or Birthday gifts because I used to cook so much.

I remembered the Thanksgiving that all of my running friends and I did a pie exchange. We all made 7 pies of the same flavor, then we all exchanged so that we had 7 different pies but we only had to make one kind.

I looked at the fact that I have at least 20 pie tins and remembered the year that I made 25 pies for neighbors and how much I love to make pies.

I remembered how much I love Thanksgiving and making everything from scratch.

As I cleaned and organized my drawer that is completely full of different cookie cutters, I was reminded how many times my girls and I made sugar cookies, using Grandma Sandy's recipe, for friends and neighbors.

I am really looking forward to doing this again by myself and with my girls. I remember how therapeutic this used to be for me and now that I will find myself alone for 2 weeks out of the month as my girls are with their dad's I am looking forward to turning my music up and just losing myself in cooking and baking.

This is fair warning to my friends and neighbors....You may be getting treats from me.

I continued through the entire upstairs and part of the downstairs. I have only one more closet in the basement to get through. I truly have enjoyed doing this.

Everyone should go through their kitchen and house like this at least once a year.
It is very sad to divide up 13 years of memories and things but at the same time for both Joey and I it has been therapeutic, almost a cleansing and liberating in so many ways.

Now I just have to find a way to keep it this clean and organized.......