Dust, papers and dusty papers

Atchoo! *dust settling down after vigorous cleaning*

I've been busy today and it's finally beginning to feel and look like Christmas in my apartment. Today's job was to clean up my study. A tiny room filled with papers, notes, books, binders and dust. I haven't seen the top of my table for quite some time until today.

The process is as this. I clean the living room, move all extra stuff into the bedroom and the study. Then I tidy up the bedroom and while I'm at it, I move all the extra stuff into the study... You see where this leads? Yes, a chaos in my study. I haven't got enough shelf space in here, so most of the stuff ends up in huge wobbly piles on the table. The kinds of piles that could surprise you with an avalanche, if you're not careful.

As you can probably guess I'm, unfortunately, one of those people who throw nothing away. However, I steeled my heart today and carried out almost four big plastic bags full of stuff. Four! Two bags of paper to be recycled and two bags of miscellanous bits and pieces I will never miss.

Before the ending was this happy, the above mentioned process of cleaning had to be gone through in miniature.

In order to clean up the table, I had to clean up quite a few binders. Sort out which papers were still needed and which were not. Turns out, most were not... After cleaning up the binders, I could stuff the binders with new papers. I'm sure I'll be cleaning some of those papers away next year, but hey, at least I have a clean table for the time being. I'll worry about the whereabouts of each parchment later. Cleaning up the table means that my almost foolproof system of archiving has momentarily gone into a state of deep shock, you see. Things are suddenly where they should be - the official documents from the different board meetings of different societies are actually filed away into the proper binders. Ooo, misleading...

Now I only have to do minor touch ups here and there plus vacuum the whole apartment. Then I'm ready to head towards Nousiainen to spend most of my holidays there... Seems dumb, but I have to admit that Christmas is just the kind of excuse I need to get everything done. And besides, mom and dad are going to stop by my place for glögi on Christmas Eve, after the "declaration of Christmas peace". We'll sit at my place while the traffic settles down. (Those of you who've seen the traffic around these corners about 20 minutes past noon on Christmas Eve know what I'm talking about.) So it's nice to have a clean home.

Clean home that smells of gingerbread cookies! Whee! I just got the last bunch out of the oven, yummy! I haven't made any cookies or pastries or anything for myself before. Most of the years I've lived away from home I've been working like crazy during these last two, three weeks before Christmas. This is the season of selling books. Now that I don't work at the bookstore anymore, it suddenly gives me a lot more time to prepare for Christmas. I don't think I'll ever again (before retirement) have a December like this. Some studying (and thesis writing, for sure) but otherwise nothing else. I've had time to hop into a bus, ex tempore, and go shop with Tytti or drive to mom & dad's to spend the day there. I love it. I just love it. :) If I were a millionaire, this is the way I'd always spend December.

Feeling good, Christmassy and happy. I hope the snow doesn't melt before Sunday...