Dull Roar

Things seem to have settled down to a dull roar in the last few days. I'm sure it will pick up again when school closes today. I didn't even have to make breakfast today since there is a pancake breakfast this morning at the school. The kids went out the door in a mad tear as per usual. Then I promptly pulled the front porch to pieces!

When I first moved to our little log house the front (and only) door to this house was in my kitchen and kids and Hubby alike would come through the door and promptly drop everything on the floor. I spent half my time tripping over footwear and mits and hats and gloves when I was trying to cook. I made short work of that because by the following year I had shortened our living room and put an entry to the house on the North side of the deck. The door in the kitchen became the door to the deck and nothing else. Hats and mittens and scarves were now dumped in the front porch.

I realized very quickly that the front porch was becoming a catch-all. Everything that Hubby and the girls didn't know what to with got dumped in there and the corner became a rats nest for papers that were no longer needed for school, mits that were no longer one of a pair, and dust and dirt like you've never seen. Hats that didn't make it to the hooks provided, were thrown on the floor and left forgotten in the mess. Occasionally I would have a fit and get the girls to spend an afternoon sorting through the pigsty. But lately I've noticed that the mess was getting worse and things were going missing and there was no rhyme or reason for the bits of crap that was found in there. In the recent moving around of the house, I have managed to come up with a really nice bureau (highboy or chest of drawers for you folks who don't know that old word) that was empty. An empty chest of drawers was just the ticket for a cleanup in the front porch. So that is what I did this morning.

I gutted the front porch and swept and cleaned the floor replaced old hooks with nice new ones and cleaned out the closet. I even have a mirror to put on the wall for those vain enough to want to look at themselves before going out the door. Each person in the house was assigned a drawer for their hats, mits/gloves, and scarves. Wow! What a difference. I have discovered that the Daughters have no complete set of mits or gloves, that hats are severely scarce for both and that Daught #1 has only one scarf while Daughter #2 has none. I have oddles of leather gloves that the girls have outgrown (their hands are bigger than mine), that Daughter #1 has lost not only her gloves that she uses for riding but one of my work gloves that I loaned her for ridng lessons and she never returned, that there are tons of baseball type hats that no one wears, that Hubby has the most hats and gloves of anyone in the house and certainly doesn't need anymore as it is hard to cram anything else in the drawer and that the Daughter and I are seriously low on accessories. So later this morning after it gets to be daylight I am going out to the shed to see if I can find any of the matching gloves and mittens that lie forlornly on the floor, to find the mirror for the front porch and to finish sorting out the winter gear that's needed by the Daughters. Then tomorrow, when I go shopping for a few more things for Christmas there will be gloves and mittens galore on the list (but not for Hubby he doesn't need it)!

Boy.... does it ever feel good to get that pigsty delt with..... one room finished for Christmas.... yeah! I wonder if there is time to knit hats and mits for the girls.... hmm!