Turkey Day, Black Friday, and Beyond

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Amazingly, our family Thanksgiving did not include bloodshed this year. It was close a couple of times, but disaster was averted and a (reasonably) nice time was had by all.

I got off work at 1:00 on Wednesday and came home with the intent of cleaning the house because it's been ages since I've had the time (and an empty house) to get it done.

Rockboy was home and intent on hanging out with me for awhile, which was fine, but then he had to leave to pick up a kitten for girlfriend. Finally. The house to myself.

I started in the living room, mainly because there's not a lot of stuff in there. Couch, loveseat, chair, coffee table, 2 end tables, 2 lamps, TV, and 5 pictures on the mantle. Not a lot of knick-knacky crap to deal with. For some reason, a simple cleaning turned into Fall Cleaning - doing the windows, baseboards, windowsills, etc. Apparently, I've got something of a Black Friday cleaning tradition going on. I think that is what I did last year at this time.

This continued on for the next several days although I did take a break on Saturday and Sunday because Redneck was here and we did a little shopping.

I still have to finish the kitchen. Above the cabinets is a space - presumably for displaying your decorative items. So, I displayed decorative items. And other than looking upward from time to time and shuddering, never did another thing about it. It was time. I climbed up there and hauled all that nasty, dusty crap down and cleaned it up and put 90% of it into a yard sale box. Then I vacuumed up the dust and scrubbed the stupid woodwork rail and upper cabinets. The stuff I decided to keep is parked on the table at the moment. I really don't want to put it back up there but I don't have anywhere else to put it but it's also stuff I don't want to get rid of because it's either an antique or from a family member, or both. So, it's in limbo on the table until I can make a decision about what to do with the stuff.

It's not allowed anywhere else in the house because it's kitchen-y looking stuff AND it will not coordinate with the way the rest of the house looks.

It's a dilemma, y'all. What do you do with the stuff you can't really get rid of, but don't really want to keep? It's beginning to look like it may wind up in boxes in the attic.

Really, the entire point of the exercise was two-fold: to get the house clean, and to get rid of stuff.

I try really hard to keep my level of stuff to a minimum - I really do try. But then I get confused by this kind of stuff.

I'm not terribly sentimental - I can get rid of things that were given to me as gifts without a second thought. If I don't love it or don't use it, it's got to go.

But the gray area of family heirloom/antique kind of gets me. It doesn't help that every time I go to my mom's house, she has some little something that Great Aunt Mary crocheted or whatever and she wants me to have it. Since I'm the only girl, I've become the repository for all this stuff from my mother. I hate to tell her no, I don't want it - she gets that hurt look.

I can promise you that those doilies and back-of-the-chair-head-protector things will never see the light of day again - they've been stuck in the drawer that holds my one tablecloth and cloth napkins (for Easter). My decorating style could be considered Mid-Century Modern with a minimum of clutter/frilly crap.

And I'm afraid that if I get rid of the stuff - on Craigslist, Ebay, yard sale, whatever - that I'll wind up regretting it later. Once it's gone, it's gone, right?

Welcome to December. 24 days until Christmas. Have you finished your shopping yet? I've got some doilies that I'm sure someone on your gift list would just LOVE.