First of all, thank you to everyone who participated in the Small Things last month! I loved your emails and seeing your point tallies! A few of you sent me the actual tallies with your notes and I smiled all the way through them! It's exciting to see the Small Things in action at someone else's house and really makes me feel a part of your lives. I'd love to figure out a way to do more sharing amongst ourselves and maybe that will happen as I get more time.
We got in to our hotel room at about 10:30 last night and my man is already back at it early this morning. Today we are trying to beat the carpet layers, who will not want to work around our scaffolding. I appreciate Tom for letting me sleep just a little bit later and get a quick post off before heading out to join him. More fun and games.
GREAT NEWS! We were able to extend our stay here at the Holiday Inn Express through Saturday! Yea! We won't be homeless after all! For a town that's booked solid for the next two years, this is nothing short of a miracle, so thank you for your prayers.
Since we got in so late last night, I hope you'll forgive me if I announce the winners tomorrow. I hate to keep you in suspense, but I'm afraid I will rush through the emails and miss some some scores. I really appreciate your patience with me this week. This is just absolutely crazy, me living in a hotel and working on a construction site and living on fast food and NOT BEING ABLE TO BLOG FREELY!
I'm in a bit of a quandry, being so far from home and being away longer than expected. I need to make new arrangements for my dog and my silly donkey because my neighbors who were taking care of them are now out of town themselves. It's not like we have NEXT door neighbors, who can pop over easily. Asking someone to come and care for your pets when your driveway is a quarter mile long and requires a driver's license to get there means that you can't just get a neighbor kid to do it.
So that leaves asking an adult to oversee the task. I have two people I could ask, but you want to know my hesitation?
I wonder how bad my house looks, now that we've been gone a week and the last people to lock up were my (grown) kids! I'm sure the weeds are knee high and there is a distinct possibility that the marauding raccoons have made of mess of the porch and garbage cans. The place can look really bad in pretty short order.
You know me well enough by now to know that I ain't a perfect housekeeper. But I do manage to keep things tidy most of the time, and with the help of my perfectionist husband, our place usually looks presentable. At least the parts people can see.
Today's Small Thing is to look at your house the way someone new would look at it. What is the first thing they would notice? Would they see a disaster, something akin to a nuclear meltdown? Or would they see a lived-in sanctuary? I use the words "lived-in" because we all know you can't exist in a magazine-worthy spotless place in the real world.
Sometimes the best thing I can do for my home is to step outside, close my eyes and then step back inside and look around. Oh! Now I see newspapers and magazine on the coffee table. Where did those come from? A pile of shoes by the door! Mail spread out over the counter! Those are the first things I now notice, and those are the first things a guest would see as well. I'm not going to let my guest get any further than the front rooms, so that's where I will focus my picking up today. (Well, I would if I were HOME...) "Seeing" things for the first time opens your eyes to what's important to straighten up.
POINTS: 50 biggies for pretending to be a guest at your home...and then spending NO MORE than 10-15 minutes picking up and straightening just those areas the guest would see. If you choose to spend more time on it, feel free, but don't do it because I told you to!
