On Sunday, we began the “fall cleaning” process just a little bit early. In Texas, deep cleaning tends to happen in the fall because no one has been able to open the windows for six months due to heat, and the a/c and fans have been running nonstop for at least that long. Normally, we do our fall cleaning in October, but both Laurence and I got an itch to start culling things last weekend. The family does this periodically – we don’t like things to cluster up. Our last culling process was before our move last Nov/Dec, because we were downsizing from a two-story, 2250-square-foot house into a one-story, 1550-square foot house. Beyond that, I’ve been pretty good about keeping my personal stuff cleared out ever since going through the full KonMari process back in the fall of 2015.

However, it was clearly time for some rejiggering of our stuff. When we downsized, we still kept more than we needed, because we didn’t really know what we’d need in terms of furniture, cooking utensils, school supplies, college prep, etc. We also did an initial setup of furniture in the house that wasn’t necessarily going to be permanent. In fact, things have already moved around in our living room since the initial configuration. And it still feels crowded and misconfigured. Some of that is purely that we need to wait until we have the money for some things we need (decent bookshelves, for instance), and some was due to excess stuff. Hence: culling.

After a couple hours of going through movies, books, and video games, we had four large bags of items to take to Half Price Books. Jason wanted to sell them off right away rather than keep them in our living room for a few days. (Ironically, when he arrived, he found out that we can only sell them by appointment, so we can’t bring them in until tomorrow, anyway.) So on Sunday afternoon, Jason and the boys went off to HPB. Ambrose didn’t want to go, but Laurence did…and I saw my opportunity. I asked Jason to take Ambrose, too.

For a glorious hour and a half, I had the house to myself for the first time since March 6th.

That’s not a lot of time, and I didn’t do much with it. I watched a show, ate a snack, drank some iced coffee, played on my phone. Nothing major. But there were no other people around. After almost six months of never being completely alone, I had those 90 minutes, and appreciated every single one. Especially since they came unexpected and out of the blue. My brain clearly appreciated them – I slept for a full ten hours that night, and got the most restful sleep I can remember in a long time.

Now let’s just hope it isn’t another six months before the next opportunity for total person-quiet!