coming home again: priorities

One of the downsides of roadtrips is coming back. I mean, coming home is great, and once you've thoroughly checked your bed for spiders and your coffeemaker for mold, you get to settle right in... but the toll on your car and your house can be pretty overwhelming.

I have the habit of detailing and vacuuming my van as soon as we get home, carrying in suitcases and toys and books and immediately putting everything in its place. I do laundry the first day home, and by 24 hours, the clothes, car and house are spotless.

I'm totally lying. I don't do any of that stuff. In fact, that paragraph makes me laugh a lot. I bet my sister Leah does every.one.of.those.things.

When we roll in from a trip, we bring the essentials inside the house: laptops, children, and baby wipes. The rest of our belongings are extracted on an as-needed basis. Some things never come back. And once we bring the suitcase in, it sits in the corner until the Spirit moves me, or the MOG runs out of unmentionables.

So the laundry, it is great and insurmountable, and I go into this catatonic state where there are SO MANY things to do that I freeze up, like the AC when it's working too hard, and I just sit around, thinking about all the things I need to do. And eventually, I think of something specific, and I do that thing, and then I'm all worn out and need to take a nice long break, maybe resting my head on the pile of clean laundry that is a whole 'nother problem.

The new development, since I've gotten all crafty and whatnot, is the projects I take on in the middle of the chaos. Right now I am giving serious thought to spray-painting some pumpkins for my front yard, but we don't have any clean towels. So. What to do? Hush, men. It's not that easy to decide.