Thankful for ... organization.

I need Monday this week. I need it to recover from my weekend, during which I went mad and turned my house over, top to bottom.

It started with me needed to get all the junk out of the guest room so my beloved mother-in-law can have a place to rest her head during Thanksgiving week. I'd planned on just taking my junk out and shifting it to my bedroom, clearing a path and a place for a bed.

But just looking at the room where all the things we don't really need go to be forgotten, I was overwhelmed. So it took it all out of the room and started with a blank slate. That's what they say you need to do on Clean House and DIY network, anyway. (The stuff I dismantled and re-mantled included my two bookcases and the hundreds of novels housed therein.)

Four hours later, it was done. I got rid of a desk, an exercise ball, five shoeboxes, four paper bags full of goodies and two Rubbermade containers that stopped opening without protest sometime in 2005. Now it looks like a real room, one that I wouldn't mind moving into. If I wouldn't miss the hubs so much.

On Saturday, we took a family trip to Costco to pick up necessary items above and beyond our usual Saturday (under $100, thankyouverymuch) trip. Matt got a much-needed ladder, we picked up Christmas lights and enough peanut oil to deep-fry our entire Thanksgiving dinner. After that, I stopped at Bed Bath & Beyond to buy out their kitchen organization section, then did the week's grocery shopping at Safeway (London broil was half off!).

No sooner did I think I was home for the day than the hubs convinced me to head to Target to pick up a fire pit. Finally ... it was 4 p.m. and I was ready to get started on the big kitchen remodel! Everything out of the cupboards, useless packets of Shake and Bake thrown away when husband was outside ("Honey, if I knew we had it, I'd use it!" Yeah, right.) and everything back in with new shelves, steps, dividers and Lazy Susans.

But it was only 8 p.m.! So I surveyed my bedroom, host now to all the keeper junk from the guest room. Only one place left to scour: my closet. Out went everything, and out stayed everything while I grabbed my 8 hours.

Bright and early Sunday morning, I declared war on the items in my wardrobe I can never bring myself to get rid of (bye-bye, semi-flattering-sweater-I-only-wear-once-a-year and Doc-Marten-sandals-circa-1998!), forced myself to sort through the tiny items that are too good to throw away but not good enough to use or keep, and put everything back with room to spare!

By then, however, the dog had gotten a bath, so there was the bathroom to clean. And in cleaning the bathroom, I noticed the sad state of the cleaning closet. Which led me to investigate the linen closet. And on Sunday afternoon, the hubs and I despaired at the state of our home. All this organization had left the house disheveled, with piles of trash and recycling everywhere. To the dump! By dinnertime, we'd gone through and cleaned up after ourselves, and sank into bed exhausted (the hubs didn't even make it under the covers before he was snoring away).

But today, with a clean, organized and purged home awaiting, I feel proud and accomplished.

And not a little tired and sore!