Early Summer Cleaning

Hiya.

I’ve got an hour to kill before I leave for my annual box doctor appt. I’m stoked about going to Alaska!! I’m stoked about my interview at [company name deleted] tomorrow!!

So tonight I get to print out my résumé and iron my new MaxStudio sailor-cut linen pants. MaxStudio is my new favorite store that I can’t afford to shop at. Yes, I ended that sentence in a preposition. I was showing them to Johanna and her friends after brunch yesterday. I pulled them out of the bag and after they got over the size (2, what’s the big deal? besides, their clothes run big, in my opinion.) I showed them the original MaxStudio pricetag. I said, “Ta da!” And pulled out the $116.00 pricetag. Johanna’s friends opened their mouths to talk, then closed them. Johanna, knowing me, said, “AND what did you actually pay?” I pulled out the $39.99 pricetag. Johanna’s friends cheered.

Here’s a similar pair, but cropped.

These last couple of weekends I’ve been enjoying the copious amounts of free time I have now that I don’t spend half of Saturday on my bike and the other half of Saturday sleeping because I’m exhausted, and all of Sunday trying to get done what I’d normally have gotten done on Saturday.

And so I’ve been tackling new projects. Since college, I’ve had all my art supplies in a Tecate beer box that I took from behind a liquor store in Durango when I was packing to move back to Texas. Last summer I bought these nifty (and cheap) Ikea (was that redundant, nifty and cheap and Ikea?) light blue storage containers to store my art supplies. I might even have blogged about it, I’ve been meaning to do it for so long.

Welp, it’s done. I cleaned out my art supplies, throwing away tubes of dried paint, pieces of pastels and chalk that are too small to use. I threw away an almost-new sketch pad because it was given to me and even though it was a nice gesture, it’s cheap and I’ll never use it for actual projects.

I also threw away/donated to charity all my old tapes. Pharcyde, Mary J. Blige, Cypress Hill, plus a crapload of recorded tapes and recorded-off-the-radio tapes. They’re a fun trip down memory lane, but I haven’t had a tape player in ages and I don’t forsee myself buying one. No use being a packrat.

I threw away a whole box full of stuff and filled 2 bags of stuff to give to charity: shirts that used to belong to exes that I don’t need to hang on to, no matter how soft and fuzzy they might be, shoes that I never wear, shoes that I’d wear if I’d bought them in the right size, nail polishes I never wear, picture frames I don’t use, etc.

Go me! I still have more to do, I want to bring a few books to Half Price, a few cds to Soundwaves, etc. Sell a few things on eBay.

But because of what I’ve already done, I now have a shelf to put my bike stuff on in my closet. I used to just throw it all on the floor in a pile. And everything is all organized, it’s awesome!

This weekend I continued what I started and actually took the charity bags to my car and actually threw the trash out and cleaned what I was avoiding when I was reorganizing. Like my kitchen. And my floors.

It feels good.

Oh, and balanced my checkbook, paid bills, did some shopping, laid out by the pool, watched “Thank You for Smoking” (awesome), and drank copious amounts of Belgian Beer. Good times.

I used “copious” twice in this blog. Just sayin.