Yes, finally, it is spring break time for me, and I am so looking forward to it. As usual, any time I have a break from school I have a long list of “to-do” items that hopefully I’ll manage to do even half of before the holiday is over. My main goal is to get my house put back together again. Since September 2009, my life outside of my teaching job has revolved primarily around writing my last book. That meant doing the minimum amount of house cleaning to just keep things livable around here.

I am by no means a perfectionist when it comes to house cleaning. In fact, both my husband and I are major clutter bugs, but enough is enough already! I am going room by room and not only cleaning but reorganizing as well so we can get more use out of the space we have around here. Some of this means tossing out (or I should say donating to local thrift stores) a lot of “stuff.” Today I found about a dozen small candles inside a cabinet in the living room (which is the first room I’m tackling). I don’t even use candles because I have dogs and cats running around and feel they are too dangerous. Where did these even come from?

Besides cleaning around here, I have some web house work to do on my About.com site. Primarily this means transferring old content to new templates, which I totally hate doing because I’d much rather have fun creating new jewelry projects, but for SEO purposes, it has to be done sometime.

Before anyone tells me not to work too hard, I have to confess that I’m also reading a wonderful book recently recommended to me, Stoner (New York Review Books Classics). Yes, I know. I’m reading for pleasure, what a concept! I’m about half way through it, and with my horrible allergies, I expect that my cleaning bug will get zapped in about two to three days max, and I’ll be forced to relax and read for awhile.

On that note, I’m returning to my dust mop!