My parents arrived tonight. We’ll be celebrating Christmas early this year, since both my brother and I will be with our in-laws on the actual holiday.

So today, when I wasn’t doing last-minute shopping – I was getting my house mom clean.

Surely I missed some things since I was pressed for time, but I did what I could. Floors swept throughout the house and Swiffer mopped. Living room tidied. My husband vacuumed.

This month’s cleanings has certainly helped get the house in order quickly!

I ran a very muddy Turkey Chase 10K this morning — which ended up measuring 6.39 miles instead of 6.2. And due to the mud I’m guessing, they parked us along the road and in smaller side lots rather than the field across from the start line. After the race I jogged back to the car to grab my jacket and logged the distance on my Garmin — I was about .3 miles from the start. So I jogged back for post-run breakfast to make it an even seven.

Once home, I started cooking. Pumpkin and apple pies first, followed by Tofurky, mashed potatoes, stuffing and vegetarian gravy. By the time dinner was ready, I had been cooking for about six hours! (When will I learn to make pies and maybe the potatoes — which I also bake — ahead of time?)

That said, there was no official clean-up project today. However, all dishes used in food prep are clean (hubby helped!), and I tidied up a bit and wiped down the counters.

The kitchen is cleaner than when I started this morning!

Now … if my day wasn’t crazy enough, I’m going to go shopping at midnight!

For some reason, we have a wet bar in our living room. It’s not like the house is so big you can’t make it to the kitchen for a glass of water. I don’t think we’ve ever used the sink.

But the counter space does come in handy. Since there’s an outlet, we usually charge our electronics here. I’ve got my laptop on it right now. It’s a little awkward — I’ve got a cat situation keeping it off my lap at the moment. But it works!

Anyway, where there are electronics there are cords …

I’ve been meaning to get a charging station for a while now. It won’t hold everything … but the phone cords and a rarely-used charger fit in the base, and my camera battery charger and camera fit in the bin in front.

And when we’re not charging anything, the cord can tuck behind the station. Perfect!

That’s a picture frame in front. I’ll eventually replace the Target label with a photo!

I spent the night buried in papers, as I sorted through and filed many piles and boxes of paperwork. It’s finally starting to pay off!

What once looked like this:

Now looks like this:

There’s still work to be done, but I’m definitely moving in the right direction!

I really didn’t feel like cleaning up anything tonight. I was even almost tempted to tackle the ironing pile.

But I persevered and took on a much larger project.

This is the cabinet in the master bathroom. Since we don’t have a medicine cabinet or any other storage except for a small shelf, everything winds up under here.

There were empty boxes, shampoo samples, and expired medication scattered throughout the cabinet. I tossed the trash and put all the samples into a few cosmetic bags that were already in there. I also threw out a few very, very old and/or unwanted bath products. When the plastic bottle is starting to discolor, it’s time to let the body wash go!