This week has gone by very fast, I have continued with the organizing and putting the house back to a more romantic feel. For me, it is the linens that make the home feel homey.
The smells of dinner cooking and the sounds of setting the table are part of what makes us feel like, "this is home".
Through all the sorting and moving things about I ran out of space because I was trying to make all the items have free space so it is easy to clean. The snack/tea trays and cups had no place to go but I do not want to give them up.
So I decided I would leave them on top of the buffet and just cover them with one of our beaded milk jug covers.
There is much history behind these beaded lace covers. They are called milk jug covers because they were used to cover the milk jugs to keep the flies out of the milk. The glass beads are used for weight to hold the lace down over the jug.
After I finished covering the trays and cups it felt right and a bit historical.
Charles came in the room about that time and said, "that looks very nice there". So now the tea time plates and cups have a new place and will be handy to use instead of reaching high into the kitchen cabinet.
Each day this week I have done my best to do something constructive to continue with my plans that I have to put the house in better order to make it easier to clean.
I am trying to sort through things to make it easier to get to them so that I do not have to climb or bend down low.
We have been harvesting vegetables from the garden...
I have been working on plans for our fall garden because in about six weeks or less it will be time to get the seeds started for fall.
I am working my way through the clutter and the house is in a much better order than it was.
It is very easy to get off from our routines and when it does, it does not take long before everything is backed up.
Our abilities change as we get older and I have learned that I need to wash laundry more often to keep the stack of folding and ironing from getting too big of a job because my endurance is slowing down.
Last month I got behind with ironing and before I knew it I had a pile of Charles work shirts waiting to be ironed. My new plan is when I have three work shirts ready for ironing, it is time to iron before it is four, five or six shirts.
Life is about adjusting what and how we do things and now I have figured out that I have to break down my chores in a way that it is easier for me to do them. The things to do will never go away and we do not need to dread them, we just need to figure out the best way for us to do them.
This new way leaves me enough energy to do other projects and this is what was missing in my routine.
Many things we do in our home require us to do them over and over such as folding laundry but such a necessary part of keeping a home. The reward is a well kept home and a much better situation than the overwhelming feeling of everything in my house needs cleaning.
This week I washed the mattress cover before I washed the sheets.
The weather has been so very hot and I feel the mattress cover should be washed more often during the summer.
I take my time with chores now because rushing through household work makes us less observant. I try to do other things that I notice needs to be done before that becomes a larger problem.
Now a nice clean mattress cover will be under the freshly washed sheets which I do weekly.
While the mattress cover and sheets were washing I pulled the bed away from the wall so I could dust and also wash the walls and baseboards. I keep the bed on sliders so I can pull the bed when I need to.
While I had the bed moved forward, I scraped another section of paint off the floor because I am slowly removing the paint from the floors in our bedroom so I can redo our floors. This is a slow project and I have been working on it in sections.
I have a short stool that I sit on and a long handle scraper. The room is almost 3/4 scraped and I am happy with that.
One day recently I slid the chest of drawers over and scrapped the paint off that section of the floor, cleaned up the mess it made and then pushed the chest of drawers back in place. Little by little this job is getting done.
When I finish scraping it all down then we will probably rent a floor sander by the hour and complete that room. This project is teaching me patience.
I could not sleep the other night and I lay in bed thinking about how I needed to clean behind the night stands. The room is very small and the night stands crowd the room making it very difficult to clean behind and around them. I thought about how back in time many people did not use nights stands. There were wash stands and chest of drawers and or dressers that held an oil lamp. So I decided to remove the night stands to see if we could get used to not having them instead of struggling to clean behind them. Now It feels less crowded around the bed and it will be easier for me to keep it clean.
Another thing I did this week was I gave a good wipe down to each room paying most attention to the tops of doorways, wall pictures, and baseboards.
I groomed Bernadette and Elizabeth this week and cut their fur short. Boy that was a job!
Elizabeth looked as worn out as I felt but she will not be as hot with this really hot weather.
More fresh vegetables from the garden.
This is the first year we have grown the Heirloom Cherokee Purple Tomato and we are crazy about it, it is so delicious.
We have two tables in our home, this smaller one which is a drop leaf and our larger one that has six chairs. We use both of our tables but this smaller one is my favorite place to eat.
Our home is what we make it and each of us have the ability to to make it simple, charming or whatever fits our personality. Make your home how you want it to be by taking each day and giving it one hour to work on the special things that you would like to get done in your home. Grandma Donna
