Even more important is that clean is creeping into the rest of the house

AND the guys are helping me keep it that way. Talk about a huge change in attitude! We are lazy cleaners generally. My house has never been truly dirty—you wouldn’t call the hoarders show on me for certain, but it gets to where I am facing C.H.A.O.S (can’t have anyone over syndrome) if I don’t do a major deep clean ever so often. No C.H.A.O.S. any more and that is huge. It is also very money saving.
How does a clean house save money?

1.    It costs more to heat and cool clutter. Less things to keep comfy, the less needed to do them.
2.    If I know where something is (ie where it belongs) then I’m not tempted to purchase a replacement rather than hunt for it.
3.    Things left out that shouldn’t be are more prone to meet with a cat related accident of any type if they are secured in their proper storage place. No breakage or other mess on it, means no need to clean up, repair or replace.
4.    Being tidy helps you spot potential problems and do a $5 repair rather than a $50 or $500 repair.
5.    If you are trying to keep the fridge empty of leftovers you tend to use them rather than lose them. Example: yesterday’s pot roast is today’s roast beef hash and tomorrow’s roast beef sandwiches for work.

The list goes on, but you get the idea.
Along with deep cleaning I’ve been working on a possible budget getaway for dh and I. So I’ve been spending some of my “time budget” cleaning up the camper, packing it and checking out possible free sites to see.
I ordered and received VERY quickly a vacuum part for my good sweeper from Cathy. Thanks again Cathy. Dh is suppose to install it tonight. Hopefully we calculated right as to what the problem was and I’ll have my expensive vacuum back for very little money.
Oh and in case you didn’t notice below. I did manage to get another blog update made.

Oh I’m around, just been kind of busy.

I finished off the last of the merchandising shops I had scheduled and that kept me busy for a few days.You cannot imagine what a difference a change in mental state can make on those jobs.
The ones that were giving me so much physical pain had got to where they were taking me two hours, sometimes more, to do each because I dreaded doing them so much.I had 7 of those to do on Monday and Tuesday.Monday it took me nearly 8 hours (including driving time) to do the first three, and then another 2.5 hours to file them (inventories with lots of number entries).All day long I kept dreading the next day that I had four scheduled.I even talked myself in to possibly consider being late completing the one closest to home so I could just do three that day.I never do my jobs late, but I was seriously considering it.
Yesterday I got up and reminded myself that IF I could finish these last four on that day I would never have to do them again.Long story short, I finished the four jobs in five hours!!! And the report entry went a lot faster too.I think it was the idea I’d be free of them just as soon as the day was over.
Oh and for all those hours, I only made about $150, take out my fuel and the aspirin I had to pop to get through it… Better to be home working on the business and other things.
Attitude changing here in the house has been pretty big too.We only ate out once last week, the day we went to vote—early voting.The rest of the week we ate nice meals complete with breads and desserts each night.I figure right there I saved a ton of money because the guys ate the leftovers for work lunches.
A big change is the kitchen.You see when I’m tired, like so many other people, I tend to put off doing dinner dishes, let the leftovers build up in the fridge and well sweeping the floor is optional.I am proud to say that since I first started tinkering with the idea of not doing so many shops I have kept the kitchen shining clean.I know to some of you that is no big accomplishment, but for my kitchen to be that clean for going on three months straight now, without a single dirty dish being left on the counter EVER is pretty spectacular.