COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 31

More like Day 30-1/2. Or Day 30-1/4. Let's get real, I'd be generous calling it Day 30-1/16. In other words, we didn't really do homeschool today. I mean, it wasn't a COMPLETE waste of time. I did have them read for 30 minutes and do online math for 30 minutes, my son had a Google Classroom meeting that lasted an hour, and my daughter had two 45-minute dance classes. But I let them do it all on their own, basically unsupervised. And I'm still going to give them credit for time served.

Today and tomorrow, I have decided, are simply throw-away days. This afternoon, my brother-in-law offered to come by and help my husband move some heavy furniture to the curb (tomorrow is trash day, and God bless our city trash guys who will take literally anything that will fit in their truck, provided only that it is non-hazardous and not currently on fire) and some other pieces into the POD. So my husband and I spent all morning making those pieces accessible, and also cleaning rooms in preparation for our realtor's walk-through on Friday.

In case you've never had to do it, clearing out a house that's crammed full of 20 years of (beloved) clutter is daunting. I mean, like, overwhelmingly daunting. I stand in front of our 2-story-plus-finished-basement house with the 17-foot-long POD looking abysmally tiny next to it, and wonder, 'how on EARTH will we fit most of our stuff in there?" Clearly, the answer to that question is, "Throw out a lot of our stuff."

And that really is what we need to do. I am the borderline hoarder in the family, the one with a sentimental attachment to everything, so I am the one who needs to ruthlessly let go of things. And surprisingly, I have been able to do that. I've flipped through huge piles of my children's school papers and projects and reminded myself that I have photographs of most of them, pulled out one or two (ONLY ONE OR TWO!!!) to save, and then mentally bade them farewell and thrown them in the trash.

It is terrifyingly cathartic.

My daughter, who is an unrepentant slob like her mother (well, to be fair, I'm more of a repentant slob), was delighted at the sight of her pared-down, neat and clean bedroom. "It's amazing!!" she blurted as she spun around in the center of her nearly-empty room. I told her to think about how much she loved the look of a neat, organized room, and plan on keeping her new room that way. I suspect that she and I will have a roughly equal level of success with that, but we'll both try. My son, who is something of a minimalist at heart, looked at his slightly emptier room and only commented, "I'll probably fall out of that smaller bed a few times before I get used to it." (We moved his queen bed out and unbunked the twin beds in my daughter's room so now they both have a single twin bed. Being something of a sprawler, he's probably not wrong with that remark.)

Right now, getting our house ready takes priority over schoolwork for two kids who are well ahead in their work, and who have a mom with free time to make this up later in the summer. So I don't feel guilty for giving them some time off. It'll all be worth it in the end. Right? Right.