archaeology

 This little piggy stayed at home,  all day. This little piggy started to clean up the living room, starting with the one hundred and twenty year old bureau in the corner, a receptory for everything, a happy hunting ground for chewed-up pencils that might just work. Or not, there is no knowing this. Clear the table and empty the top drawer of the bureau, sort the contents. A bucket of soapy water,  clean the top of the bureau and the dusty things resting up there. Then wipe the inside of the drawer too. The water is no the darkest grey, this has not been done for years. Take out the second drawer, and deal likewise with it.

Whilst the drawers are drying off, sort the removed contents, decide what is to go where, what has to be stored elsewhere, and also those things that will no longer be needed. There are so many things in the drawers and alcoves of this one piece of furniture, they all need to be sorted.

In the early afternoon, start to sort the coloured pencils and crayons, all gathered in jam jars, all without points, all in need of sharpening.

And an hour later, they are sorted into ones that are broken, and cannot be sharpened anymore, and those that are in order. Sort the good ones into groups and put a rubber band around each group. The rest goes into the bin. Electronic bits and pieces that are probably no use anymore but that may not yet be thrown out go into the top drawer, school writing supplies into the next.

Now the ten lesser drawers all need to be emptied and cleaned. The contents need to be sorted into some kind of order, one for coloured pencils and another for crayons, yet another for old watches and sunglasses. And so forth.

By the time the writing surface has been wiped clean and folded up, and work has begun on the bottom drawers it is evening.

Clearing up the mess of several years.

There are sets of Lego down there from the sons young childhood. He used to love that.