Catching Up

It's taken me a while to get back into a routine upon returning from our trip. MetaBaby's been teething, so he's been waking up at least once in the middle of the night. Much to my dismay, one of those times lasted 90 minutes, and ended with me rocking him to sleep in my arms. We both fell asleep, and I woke up with a stiff neck. Go figure. And when we get back from a trip, there's always so much to catch up on. Grocery shopping, mail sorting, unpacking, laundry, etc.

Before I leave, I like to do a few things to lighten the load for our return:

• Change the sheets and towels so I'll know everything's fresh for showering and sleeping. After a long flight, I just want to feel pampered, and this is as close as I'll get to that.
  
  
• We don't buy too much food the week before we leave so it won't go to waste. The day of our departure, we dump all of the food and drinks that will expire while we're away.
  
  
• While dumping food that we need (e.g., milk, eggs), I simultaneously write up a shopping list. When we get back, all I have to do is grab the list and go shopping. No sifting through shelves and cabinets with groggy eyes, which will inevitably lead to buying more or less than I actually need. Best to write lists with fresh eyes.
  
  
• While we're away, we separate clothes that will need to be laundered when we get back home. For example, socks and underwear go straight into the outside zippered pouch of the suitcase. All shirts and pants get turned inside out so they're easily distinguishable from clean clothes. This makes sifting through clothes easier during our trip, too, because we know what's OK to wear. Of course, we did laundry in Ireland because we stayed at my mother-in-law's home, which was excellent because we were able to pack relatively light (for such a wee fellow, he needs a lot of clothes). That said, we only laundered enough to get by while we were there.

So when we got home, I got this ridiculous surge of energy and did 4 loads of laundry, went grocery shopping, then collaped the minute I sat down at around 6PM. Fun!

I'm reminded of all of this because today I confronted our receipt pile. I haven't had a chance to go through it in a couple of months. Usually, I like keeping all of our receipts in date order so that when it comes time to match them up with our credit card statement, it's a breeze. But I've neglected that since we've returned. I pulled everything out and for some fabulous reason, I was finished sorting, matching, and filing everything in about 30 minutes. So I'm finally feeling back on my game, which is good because I was really starting to feel a bit behind on everything.

Speaking of everything, time to catch up on all of that, too.