DUST!

I've realized something again: Black products, out in the open, are
NOT conducive to a dustless appearance.

They do, however, promote dusting.

Nonetheless, that black stove of ours is NOT getting replaced by
another black product. Cream, White, Taupe, I don't care - but
nothing so dark so as to show every scratch, splatter, and speck of
dust ever created in a kitchen. It's just not right. (Of course,
whoever owned it before didn't exactly take great care of it, either,
so perhaps that's compounding my disdain.)

Oh, and I've also realized something else. Owning (or, more
accurately, paying mortgage on) a house that's large enough to
comfortably put things in seems to keep my messier habits at bay.
Having company over fairly frequently (once every month or two) also
helps. By company, I don't mean Paul. Paul knows I'm a slob so I
seldom neaten for his visits. Heck, I've got pictures of he and I
working on computers... it ain't pretty! Besides, I've seen his
apartment. Ha.

Anywho, tonight, some of our family is coming down to spend the night
so we can all have Thanksgiving together. So for the past two hours
I've dusted, wiped down, washed, trashed, rearranged, shredded, and
put things away. I could likely make an entire day of this but
somehow it's already significantly better, probably because of the new
vacuum. (New vacuum = new toy for me to play with = things get in my
way = I pick them up so I can vacuum. Tricksy, huh?)

I also realized that I still have too many clothes and need to give
more away. This was caused by taste changes over the years - but only
in part. The biggest taste change I've had is NOT having static
electricity coursing through my body, which is hard to control in the
winter months. So anything intended for winter that is polyester is
outta here unless for some crazy reason I absolutely cannot part with
it. I console myself with the sheer number of unwanted and unused
articles with the fact that many of them were in the single digit
dollar range.

Seems to me that the more often I simply stand up and walk around,
pretending I'm walking into my own house for the first time, the more
often I clean, consolidate, rearrange, neaten, and throw stuff out.
So maybe I'll just start doing that more often. LOL.

One last thing... I killed off about 12GB of photos and movies last
night. W00t!! I'm on a roll this week!!!!! Now if I could just
finish the iPhoto organization, get another external firewire drive,
and reorganize every file I can find onto ONE medium (okay, two,
because of the backup drive I'd mirror it with)... that would be
good... the thing in my way there though is cost. LOL

~w