catalogue of abominations

I have so many things bouncing around in my brain that are begging to be blogged. But, alas, I have not been able to blog this past week. At the end of the day, I am just. too. tired. And in the day I am trying to be really good about using time, and OH what uses I have for it!

When we came back from our trip, the house was cold, clammy, and musty, after being unused for a month. Everything needed to be cleaned, even though we had left it pretty clean. The high level of moisture here makes an excellent breeding ground for mold and mildew in the summer when we don't routinely make fires, and this is house spider season, and we have moths really bad this summer and I can't figure out where they are all coming from (i.e. what of my linens or sweaters they are eating!), and we brought some things home with us from the trip but could not put them away without rearranging the contents of cupboards, hampers, etc. and so I decided this was a good time to sort and purge, but once you go through one area, pulling everything out and cleaning and sorting it, invariably to put things away in their ideal places you have to pull everything out from and clean and sort in THOSE spaces. . . until you have one big mess of piles and tubs everywhere and can't even sweep the floor for all the stuff everywhere and the stress level goes up and unwashed dishes start to accummulate in the kitchen because you are desperately sorting and cleaning hampers and trunks when you should be doing the normal house upkeep and feeding your children and feeding yourself and the low blood sugar does not help, but the new tasty barbeque joint on the corner does, and the back deck is covered in tubs pulled out from the underbelly of the house so the kids can't even play there and it has been two weeks of this complete upheaval and how many MORE spaces to sort and clean do I have in this dinky house anyway?!!

what started, and what feeds, the mayhem:
--massive moth damage on a sweater my sister Rebecca knitted for me before I was married, which had been stored in what I thought was a cedar trunk. : (
--mildew covering the bottom of the same trunk, which has permeated the particle board and so will come back eventually even if cleaned well now. out with the trunk! (now where to put the rest of the things that used to reside here? . . . )
--the moths, which I have started killing between my bare hands, that is how calloused I am to them and how glad I am to be rid of one more (I have been a catch and release kinda gal my whole life, but being loathe to kill has become loathing of another, more deadly kind)
--the huge wolf spider that was lurking on the ceiling of the girl's closet, definitely vacuum worthy
--the black metal bracelets from India that my mom passed on to me when I was in hs or college now corroded by a strange powdery film that did not wash off
--also found in my "jewelry box" (really more of a little dresser styled after a Chinese apocathary chest with lots of little drawers and one small cupboard, which resides in the bathroom because there is no other place for it): the adorable baked dough painted Christmas ornaments my sister's kids made for us last year, which had absorbed so much moisture they were sickly soft. : (
--At least now I know what those tiny white bugs in the bathroom were living on. (gross!)
--the green mold growing on the outside of the new bag of flour in the kitchen cupboard
--at least now I know what those tiny white bugs in the kitchen cupboard were living on (gross!!)
--the sour bedding smell on all our bedding that I *just* washed but needs it again
--the stale, mildewy smell on all the clothes, blankets, etc. that have been in storage that I have been washing and airing out
--the black mildew that grew on our baby playgym while we were gone, because it was lying flat on the hardwood floor and I guess trapped moisture and dust, which are an evil combination. it is clean now, but permanently disgusting looking. luckily there is freecycle--it already has a taker!
--the white mold film growing all over the walls, esp. in the kitchen
--the kitchen curtains, which are not only rust stained (from the rusting iron windows) and food stained (from children sitting at the dinner table) but I realized are now mildew stained. D does not know it yet, but they are SO gone. . . .

The day I found the moth damage in that trunk and began the ransacking, I could not help but have the words of Jesus over and over in my mind: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:19-21) Fitting, eh? So the more corruption I found as I looked, the more of a life lesson I took in (and shared with the girls too).

And the best part of all this: D has gotten the purging bug (literally! ha ha) and is finally letting me release to the world things we have been holding onto but not using ever since we moved from CO. Nice stuff we bought for our house there in the Springs, Pottery Barn stuff, stuff that we still like but bought before we had kids (dry clean only, never again!) and will likely not use again, or at least for so long that they will probably be ruined in the wait. Freedom! So, out it goes! I am being brutal, inspired by my friend Sara's recently walking away from almost everything her family owned after the apartment building they lived in became infested by roaches (which can travel with you to your new bug free home). Anything broken, anything ugly, anything saved for "just in case someday." And D's mom and cousin actually gave me permission to pass on the girl clothes that B has outgrown! Yahoo!

It feels so good. And so, out of ruination comes release; from burden comes blessing.

But first, a whole heck of a lot of cleaning. . .