Staring Into The Void

I don't know what happened.

I really don't.

I was planning to go out shopping, maybe buy a dang chest of drawers or some new pens or something.

But then I found myself in the laundry.

The laundry at my family home is awe inspiring.
Unlike the laundry at my flat which is just an alcove containing a broken washing machine, the laundry at my parents' house is reasonably large, mostly made up of bench and storage space and looks like it has been hit by a meteor made out of the contents of a dozen kitchens' third drawer down.

We have a bad habit in our family of completely covering the flat surfaces in certain rooms with drifts of things that we either 'plan to put away later' or 'don't know where they go' because we haven't got a place for them.
This gives parts of our home a permanent 'tidy but slightly cluttered' look that magically doesn't vary.
It doesn't get any worse but unless we're having a big party, guests or inexplicably go a bit strange it doesn't get any better either.

This whole situation is partially a result of having shifted house about six times in four years when moving for my Dad's work when we were younger.
Every time we moved we went through a cycle that went something like this:

• We should get rid of some of this crud before we move, why waste space and effort taking it with us?
• Crap, we've left it too late! I don't want to risk throwing out something important, we'll do it when we're unpacking at the new place.
• Jesus on a sailboat, I am waaaaay too tired to look at all that stuff now. We'll just put it all in the shed/cupboard/wherever and work it out later.
  

Anyhoo the point is that the laundry is usually a big old mess.

And on this day, this would not stand.

I went in there to feed the cats or something and somehow spent the entire day shovelling things off the benches onto a folding card table, wiping down the flat surfaces, scrubbing out the dang sinks, finding places to put the homeless items, throwing out a tonne of things that should have been thrown out in the first place and mopping the floors*.

And even though I didn't do any of the things I planned to do today, didn't even leave the house, I feel it was time well spent.
It won't take long for things to creep back onto the counter-top but at least we've been reminded of what it looks like.



*I found a sock underneath the washing machine that nobody can remember missing which might be an indication of how long it has been there.