It pays to clean

I'm still working on my massive cleaning/organizing project that I started in our back bedroom. It began on Monday morning when I took everything out of the bedroom (except the furniture) and placed it all over the rest of the house. Talk about uncontrolled chaos.

And when I say that I'm "cleaning," I don't mean sweeping, pulling down the cobwebs, and dusting the shelves. I mean that I'm going through every box, every drawer, every shelf, and every file folder, and organizing, sorting, downsizing, AND cleaning. No wonder I am now on my third day of this project.

I have finally started putting stuff back into the room, which has conveniently freed up space on the carpet in the living room so Sadie can stretch out.



Although exhausting, cleaning in this way certainly has its perks. Yesterday afternoon I attacked the two drawers in the hutch on my desk.



I found all sorts of fabulous stuff I had forgotten about, like my pile of foreign money from work trips to Thailand, Ethiopia and Afghanistan.



And I found my long lost collection of Afghan business cards, including the carpet shops that I visited on a regular basis. Rauf and Rahim at Nomad were two of my go-to guys for carpets. I crack up every time I look at these cards and their creative spelling of common English words.



Cleaning like this is great. It's fun to walk down memory lane when you discover old things, and it's such a refreshing feeling to have everything so clean and organized. But there are other benefits, too. Like finding these two bad boys tucked up against the front of one of the drawers!



I remember putting them there about three years ago. I knew that I'd forget about them and that one day I'd discover them and it would be an awesome day. Looks like Goober and I get to go shopping. Weeeeeee!