Snapshots: Look Out, Marie Kondo

We've been doing a lot of cleaning out and organizing lately of some pretty neglected areas. Like A.'s office/the laundry/storage room. And the barn. And the porch.

Organizing things like this are very far from tidying up a closet or something. Cleaning out places like these involves things like mice skeletons and packrat nests. It's disgusting and exhausting, but all the more satisfying when it's finally done.

I didn't take any before photos of these areas, but I got some afters.

This is in A.'s office, where the washing machine also lives and I had stored some extra canned foods. The foods had been in crates and boxes on the floor, but we got a bunch of shelving that was being discarded at the school and used it in here. I got one of the shelving units for my very own.

So of course, I put some food on it. I was unreasonably excited by this.

 We also cleared out a very junky corner of the porch so we could set up a spot for all the horse tack we have now. With the new horse, there's been a lot more riding happening, and our tack had been living on top of the bunk bed right inside the door of the porch that the previous owner had left there. This was, obviously, a less than ideal situation. So A. built some saddle racks out of spare wood, we moved some extra hanging racks into that corner, and . . .

Never in my life did I think I would have something like this at my home, but here we are.

There has been a lot of riding lately. A. is usually occupied with keeping Bill the Chuffy Pony under control, leaving me to lead sedate Cora.

My view on these rides is literally eye-to-eye with Cora.

I didn't take a picture of the barn, but I can walk in to give the horses hay now without climbing over sheet metal and buckets, so that was a definite improvement.

Let's see what else we have . . .

I've been working on some annoying things indoors, too, like my linen situation. I don't have a linen closet, and the sheets and things have been scattered in various locations. I decided the time had come to pull it all out, see what I actually have, and then put it all back in a more consolidated fashion. So I did.

Piles of sheets.

I found that I have 24 pillowcases, but not a single extra non-flannel twin sheet, despite having three twin beds in the house. Some re-stocking might be in order.

I looked out the kitchen window the other day to see this:

Poppy is the only child who has ever taken laundry down for me. I was touched.

Let's see what animals besides horses have been up to, shall we?

The sheep have been very happily grazing the green pastures.

And the dogs have been in alert guarding positions at all times, as is proper.

Jasper has alerted us to two bull snakes in the porch just in the past couple of days, actually, which A. has disposed of. And I saw another one just brazenly slithering out in the open in the driveway towards the dogs' water dish that A. also got rid of, so I guess it's bull snake season now. No pictures of those, though.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.