Spring Cleaning In Summer

(PICTURE: Cleaning up the clutter.)

My mom always used to love to tell her friends how great of a cleaner I was. As a kid, about twice a year, I would wake up with cleaning inspiration. I used to take apart my room and completely reorganize it from top to bottom. I would always end up with bags of stuff to give away and/or throw away. On top of that, I always used to move everything in my room around that wasn't nailed to the wall...which was everything except my desk.

Well, the other day I had a flashback of cleaning inspiration. Huyen and I were hanging out at home when I said that we should go through all of our stuff and start to declutter. I'm pretty sure this moment was inspired by my excitement to ideally move back to America in about a half a year. I started to think about what I would need to bring back with me and more importantly, what Huyen would need to start her life in America. The pretty obvious fact is that we've got more than our airline allotment to carry back with us unless we ask wedding guests to stuff some of our clothes into their carry-on bags on their way home.

So, Huyen and I took to our shelves and began to throw away and sort things out. In the end, we had a trunk full of stuff to give her brother, a big bag full of recyclable paper and another bag full of my books to trade/give to some fellow expats. As much as I would love to bring books back with me, I'm pretty sure my sister doesn't want to carry a Webster's Dictionary from Vietnam's capital to America's capital.