Cleaned up and cleared out

So I was really exhausted from working so hard (cooking, cleaning) and all the people and staying up past my bedtime, and kind of lazed around till about 1PM. Then, by some magic, I got a first wind, and

- did 2 loads of dishes,
- put them away,
- sorted out what goes back to Mom,
- packed that up,
- moved all the furniture back into its usual places (by myself!),
- put away all the 'good' dishes,
- started the distiller on another gallon of water (wow! we go through it fast with guests and cooking)
- made turkey soup, and
- began an overhaul of the piles of CDs on and around the stereo.

I raided my stepson's old room for a CD shelf, because I needed something to hold them. He had baseball cards in it, and I put those in a drawer in his old room. I wonder if he even looks at those? But I know my Dad had a comic book collection that his mother threw out, and he held it against her forever (with good reason? monetary value?) so I wouldn't dare get rid of baseball cards, or the Pokemon cards that I found, as well.

Anyway, the living room, dining room, the kitchen, our bedroom and my office all look much better than a few weeks ago. I still have to finish with the CDs, move Kosta's office from that armoire in the living room and put my crafts stuff in it. Then help Kosta organize his new office. THEN the hallway down to the garage and the garage itself (omg).

But you know, it strikes me as all this is somehow about my relationship to change. I change, you change, the seasons change, the kids grow and change, but somehow home is supposed to be constant. As if I can bring all this stuff into it, and it's just supposed to absorb it.

And those changes that each of us makes involve a letting go, even if we don't think about it. You take in food, and you digest it, and you let go of a lot of it by breathing or defecating. The trees take in nutrients from the soil, and use sunlight with them to make leaves -- which they let go of at this time of year. Why wouldn't it be the same for my home?

If my home is an extension of myself, then I have to make a regular practice of letting go. Do I make that a daily practice, like digestion? a weekly practice? an annual practice, each autumn? I mean, we put the food scraps into the compost just about every day, so we let go of some stuff daily. And obviously we put out the trash each week, and so we do let go of some stuff then. Is that enough? Do I then make an annual practice of looking at clothing, books, CDs, etc.?

I guess my home has to change as I change and as my family changes. The only question is how.