I Should Be Tired

I feel like I should be bone tired.  Like, walking dead tired.  G and I spent most of the weekend killing ourselves organizing and running errands.  But instead I'm lying in bed forcing myself to kind of zone out and sleep a bit more before getting up.  I'm wired, my brain whirring.

In the last month we've donated 5-6 trunk-fulls of items to Goodwill (and we have a large trunk).  We were there twice this weekend and we have enough for another trip tonight.  Which is insane.  G's been well pleased with my desire to "just get it out of my house."  We definitely had way too much of everything, especially books.  We've gone through about a dozen boxes of books, giving away a substantial amount.  We still need a wall of bookcases floor to (nearly) ceiling, but it's nice to kind of "streamline" a bit (more on that later!). 

We still need to finish cleaning out the nursery but realized near the end that while we can put things in totes for the basement, this would require us doing the basement first (to have a place to put said totes).  So we've spent a few hours going through things down there.  Nice because we found our itsy bitsy snowsuit for Little Miss.  And all of our canning jars.  We ran to IKEA, grabbed a couple of their storage shelves and will build those this evening.  In the end I'll probably have 6-8 storage shelves down there, with the first 2 being pantry items.  Our kitchen is nice sized, but the storage in it sucks, so we're re-arranging and putting most food items down there.  We'll have a unit for canned goods and bags of rice and beans and all my glass jars of excess spices. And the one next to it will hold things like the crockpot and waffle iron and blender...things that simply don't get used often, but are still things we need too much to get rid of (and I'm trying to learn how to use that crockpot more). 

Which leads me to last night's adventures.  I put a pot of chili on the stove to simmer for dinner yesterday afternoon.  Then I cut up 6 1/2 lbs of apples and made apple butter and dried apples.  My instructions said it wouldn't take long, and knowing we were busy I decided to utilize the crockpot for my apple butter (like I did last year), and use the oven for the dried apples.  Well, what should have taken 4 hours tops for everything wasn't even finished until this morning!  I finished canning the apple butter at nearly midnight last night (after having gotten fed up with the crockpot and moving the butter to a pot on the stove), but the dried apples took until we got up today because of all the moisture in the air.  I probably should have gotten up an hour or two earlier to deal with them, as they aren't as chewy as I'd like, but they will be good reconstituted in oatmeal.  I will say that as my first time really canning by the book that my apple butter seems to have done perfectly.  They sealed as I took them out of the hot water bath last night and a proud G stood by smiling (he LOVES apple butter).

So, basically, I was on my feet all weekend, with just enough time off to keep them from swelling.  I'm feeling the nesting instinct really start to kick in, so I'll be trying to make bread today, along with applesauce to can.  We're canning a lot of it, since it's a good first food for next summer when she'll be trying things like that, as well as needed to go with pork.  And of course, continuing to organize, organize, organize.  By the end of this, I should have the home that suits me, and G is actually thrilled to just let me do my thing (organizing not being a strong point for him).  I can't wait to have a home where tidying up and light cleaning is all it takes each week!