One of the nice things about taking two weeks off over the holidays, is that towards the end of my vacation I’ve realized what a mess the house is, and am rested up enough to actually do something about it.

About Friday afternoon reached that point, so Saturday was spent not just putting away Christmas ornaments, but also organizing the disaster area that the living room had become.

One of the things I am hoping will be a huge help is I got a bin into which Michael can put his stuff. He tends to leave things all over the end tables, which in turn makes them useless as end tables. So he got a bin.

The second thing, which you probably noticed from Saturday’s posts, is that I went through the book shelves. Not only could I no longer put pictures and elephants and other things on most shelves, but most shelves were double stacked so you couldn’t even see what books where there.

Since the whole point of having the mystery shelves in the living room was so grandmom could peruse the shelves and find something to read, this was no good.

Hence the book cull.

Now that the tree is gone, Michael chair is moved back and the feline window seat is put back up. If you look closely you can see that Kat missed his seat, and has spent most of the day in it.

Here are the mystery book shelves. No more double stacked shelves! I can put pictures back up! And the elephants are back out.

One other thing I did Saturday was go through the pictures and elephants that had been put away two years ago for Christmas and never go unpacked. I decided to select what pictures and elephants came out, and left the rest boxed up. Now although there is still plenty on the shelves, things are a lot less cluttered than they were. (Trust me on this.)

I was going to show you the other book shelves (non-fiction and hardback fiction) but realized that Grandmom has stuff piled on those shelves, and she probably wouldn’t appreciate me showing off how “messy” she is.

Also, you can just see in the first picture the Blenko book ends on the top shelves of the smaller book cases. Michael’s sister gave us book ends this year (the ones around the Lemony Snickett books). The other book ends are Blenko glass elephants that I really like a lot. (I also have a pair of stone elephants on the other shelf I like even more.)

So there are multiple advantages to “staycations.” Assuming, of course, you also like to organize.

I did spend Sunday working on the computer room in the basement, where the fantasy book shelves are. It’s better, but it’s still pretty messy. And I managed to break the “table” I was standing on to reach the top shelves, so no pictures anytime soon.