New Stove Day

My new stove is coming this afternoon, so that means I have to totally clean my house (at least the downstairs) before then because I’m one of those people. I still say that what I need is a maid service that does nothing more than set appointments saying they’re coming, and that will make me clean the house in preparation for the appointment, so I no longer need the maid service.

I will admit that a monthly deep cleaning service is on my wish list when I make enough money to support it. I sometimes even remind myself of that as motivation when I have a “but I don’t wanna write” day. I figure that would force me to keep clutter in check, as it can’t get too bad in one month, and I’d tidy up before the maid came. The maid could take care of the stuff I seldom get around to doing or don’t think about doing, and then I’d enjoy it being clean so much that I might be motivated to keep it that way, like when I stay in a hotel. When I do a massive clean on my own, I enjoy it and can keep it that way for a while, but then I have a lazy day and slip, and it’s all downhill from there, so I need the combination of a good clean baseline and a regular reset. I suspect there will be a cleaning and organizing frenzy when this book is done (though I say that with every book because one symptom of being near the end of a draft is a sudden urge to clean and organize my house, which passes as soon as the book is done).

Anyway, most of what I need to do is make sure there’s a clear path to the kitchen, which will require some furniture adjusting. Then I will need to tidy, just because I want to. And I need to get all my pans out of the old stove’s storage drawer.

Meanwhile, I did manage to throw some monkey wrenches into my characters’ plans. Maybe not a complete reversal, but they’re having to improvise. This is actually making them look even more clever, which is fun, and I’m showing them working as a team. I have about 15,000 words to go to reach my rough target word count, and I don’t think this one will require massive rewrites, since I’ve been fixing things as I go. I’ll just need to do a good clean up and polish pass.

Now, off to fix my kitchen!