It’s official, school starts tomorrow and that means just one thing. Today is the very last day of Summer Break 2026. Time to double check the backpacks and lunch bags to see if we did in fact clean them out on the last half day of school back in June. I have lots of things to do this week coming because it’ll be October with the Fair, Thanksgiving, break week, and Halloween before you can blink ten times in a row!
I’ve got wood to split, models to paint, furniture to build, a sculpture to start & complete for the fair, and tonnes of cleaning to do around the house to make up for the lackadaisical approach we use during the summer months. Time to sort toys and purge those throw away McDonald’s items that pile up over the summer. Broken items, torn clothes, and cardboard can be tossed. I need to sort the shoes, boots and coats, and also the snow pants again. I don’t even want to think about the glove situation. I foresee the donation bins being full to overflowing once we’re done with them. Actually, second thought. The school will do a coat drive and we can load them up with all of it instead. Plus then their classroom gets rewarded as well. Two birds one stone sort of a thing.
The kids have really started to enjoy their time at the cottage more. I’m happy for them that this place has become a core memory for them. I’m still far more of a home body because I hate traffic, and leaving all my hobbies behind, but I can deal with it. Not much of a hardship at this point in my life. Once the kids are in school I will have many hours to fill if work doesn’t pick up in the fall. Hence the wood splitting as hobby/activity and the fair entry work, not to mention house DIY projects, cleaning and my all time favourite activity PURGING!
Oh an afternoon dedicated to a household purge is truly a wonderful thing. So cathartic! No spot left untouched. Wrappers, boxes, broken items that are unfixable in their current state, outgrown clothes, you name it, I’m looking for it and coming after all of it. The last thing I want to do is suddenly leave my kids with piles of shit to have to sort through. Random closets packed with junk are my mortal enemy. I have reduced our communal junk spaces to barren empty voids, and I like it like that. Don’t you worry the other members of the family are constantly working to refill those voids. It’s a constant cycle of struggle. Ha. Love it.
Only problem I can see now is that we have an entire summer’s worth of clothes to wash for the return to school and all of it is going to fall to me. I’m not going to be able to get through all of it today, so it will also be on my schedule this week. I have the floors, walls and kitchen to tackle first. Then clothes clothes clothes until I’m out of detergent or time. Given the trend in weather the kids may not require actual shorts for too much longer, but capris are helpful for cool mornings, and hotter mid day sun, followed by cool evenings. Layers and zippers are our friends now.
It was a good summer. We travelled outside of the province to see some of my side of the family. All four of us went this time, so it was less stressful for me. I did a fair amount of driving, and we saw many of our usual sights. Wonderland, cottage, inlaws pool, farm, beaches, indoor play places, cousins houses and such. We came back to the mines again, and did some shopping in Bancroft too. Saw friends and even attended a party or two. It was great. Tiring but great. Hell we even went to an all new (to us) waterpark called Calypso in Ottawa. That was a good deal of fun for all of us.
So many not lost but rather paused until next summer. All the best to you out there!
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