My tidying this afternoon turned into a wholesale spring cleaning after Matt got home from class. I have a niggling feeling that there are some things still in the office closet that should have been taken out and gotten rid of or rearranged or something like that, but all things considered I’m extremely happy. I’ve got one medium-sized box of things–non-urgent mail, magazines, and other various things that have been hanging about the apartment (like the candy from my Christmas stocking)–that I’ll need to go through tomorrow, but otherwise everything has been cleaned and cleaned out.

Two weeks’ worth of laundry is done AND all put away, which verges on the miraculous all by itself. We also took out about six bags of trash and have three good sized bags, mostly of clothes, to take to Goodwill. The new shelves and TV cabinet have opened up a huge amount of space, so we’ve turned the old TV stand into a dining room buffet-type thing (it makes sense, I promise), which means we have more space in the kitchen cabinets and the pantry. Let the world rejoice. Okay, maybe not the world, but certainly this household.

I’ll tackle the box in the morning before my lunch meeting, then come home and spend some quality time with that novel I’m supposed to be writing. This was a great day for that “tangible evidence of accomplishment” I get so hung up on.

On some levels it’s nice to know that despite enforcing a spending hiatus during March and almost all of April, I haven’t lost the knack for tossing away large sums of money in one afternoon. Today’s spending wasn’t even frivolous – I browsed through two shoe stores AND my favorite bookstore and left all three places without having drawn my wallet. Shock! Okay, I’ll be honest – I went to the bookstore to see whether one or more of the books I’m waiting for had been shelved yet, even though their official release dates are all on the 29th. If any of the three had been there, I would have bought them. But alas, they weren’t, so I didn’t buy anything.

No, the $350 I spent today went toward one tank of gas, one car wash, one pair of shoes (to replace Matt’s pair that is sporting multiple holes), and one trip to Sam’s Club. Granted, several items at Sam’s are things we don’t have to stock up on often – like the box of 10 reams of printer paper. But it’s amazing how fast the tally adds up.

Also of note: I am now convinced that today, April 21, 2008, is National Bulk Toilet Paper Buying Day. I saw more people with super-giganto packages of toilet paper in their carts than I ever have before. Luckily, I was there to buy some too, so I didn’t miss out on the opportunity to honor this venerable holiday.

My schedule for this afternoon will continue with the happy trend of domesticity, including finishing the laundry I started last week (and doing this week’s too) and cleaning up the nuclear waste dump that used to be our living and dining room. If that doesn’t kill me, I’ll move on to the office and maybe, just maybe, the kitchen.