This weekend, I’m not sure what happened, but I think I hit a limit on filth in this household. Spring cleaning bug, I guess. Many loads of laundry. Much sweeping. I know it’s not obvious from the photos, but for most of the pandemic, since we stopped having our cleaners come, most of the house has been in pretty bad shape. So I spent the bulk of the weekend either getting plants in the ground or setting the house in order. Still not done, but made good progress. Now my back hurts.
As part of the cleaning frenzy, I discovered that not only did Jed go through the vast mass of cables I’d pulled out of the closet and deposited in the library, sorting them, but he put them in large Ziploc baggies and labelled them with printed labels. Which is delightful, of course (he also changes all the lightbulbs when he comes, and takes out the recycling, and if Kevin hasn’t gotten all the dishes at the end of the night, he takes care of it; sometimes I think every household with kids should have three adults, at least…).
But the burning question I have is — did Jed somehow manage to dig through the chaos of the basement to find my label maker, or does he actually travel with his own label maker??? I suspect the latter. My Jedediah is kind of the ultimate boy scout, in many ways. 
Have label maker, will travel.
Also setting up a new schedule with the children for daily shower (Kavi) and daily bath (Anand), because they’ve been running pretty feral for the last year, and we need to help Kavi get her acne under control before she starts high school this fall. (No advice needed yet — if I can get her to cleanse and moisturize daily, that might be enough to take care of it.) I have literally set alarms for this, to try to help get the kids onto a new routine. And if Kavi actually flosses daily, maybe she can get those braces off at the next orthodontist appointment.
(I took her to Nordstrom on Saturday and we got her properly fitted for bras and then she bought a cute kind of skimpy top at Hollister and yes, she’s almost fourteen and high school is starting in the fall –– with clean hair and a face free of acne and braces, this is going to be interesting…)
I need to switch to teaching prep for the morning, but this afternoon, I kind of want to keep going on the cleaning. Kavi’s room is half-cleaned — can you imagine if we got it to fully cleaned? How magical that would be!
I’m going to resist the urge to show you photos of things like my nightstand (nothing on the surface but a water glass, and the cables for all the devices I charge over night are now neatly tucked away in the drawer!!!). But they do make me much happier.
When there is too much mess and chaos, it cranks up my stress level beyond belief — it just sets my ADHD pinging wildly, because everywhere I look, there’s something else that needs doing, and then I can’t THINK. I looked around my clean bedroom last night, and was almost teary with sheer relief.
When things are clean, I can take more photos of flowers. I started the spring pruning yesterday (lots to do, I’m a bit behind). There were a few random viburnum branches sticking out, so I trimmed those off the shrub and brought them in to grace the kitchen island. They smell wonderful.
So do my children, again.
