Now that it’s officially the end of summer, it’s time for an assessment.

I sat down and made a comprehensive list of all the things I did and accomplished since May, and it’s a  pretty impressive list if I do say so myself: travel to California, Oregon and North Carolina. A Half-Marathon, a long bike ride, a few long hikes, and a whole lot of cleaning.

This was the summer we got light, meaning everything got cleaned out. A ton  of things got dumped. A whole dumpster’s worth of of dump, in fact.

There was one yard sale early early in the summer, and there will be a final one next weekend.  The basement is now pristine, the walls have even been painted white.  The back garage is newly spacious, and the front garage is practically empty.  Clothes closets and file drawers and random junk is now either dumped, donated or shredded.

I have lots of pictures of mountains and landscapes and people on the media card, but not a single shot of the basement, or the garage, or the closets and drawers, yet that’s where the lion’s share of the summer energy went this year.

And even though Yosemite was incredible beyond words, I think it will actually be that clean, white basement that will give me the deepest and most long-lasting satisfaction deep into the coming winter.

How funny is that.