End of the Year Cleaning

With all the craziness this past semester, my house got more than a little out of control. Denisa and I just didn’t have the time and energy to give to it to make sure it stayed in order. So clutter started creeping back into the corners, finding little niches where it could begin to spawn and gather in strength.

Yuck.

So with this end of the year vacation, I’ve been taking time every day to clean something. In theory, it wasn’t going to be anything too spectacular. I wanted to emphasize fun, not work this time off. But as is so often the case with me, I found myself unable to stop things once I started them. So I was moving bookcases, televisions, beds, dressers, fridges, toy boxes–vacuuming every square inch of a room that I could. (I’ll admit–I didn’t move quite everything. The bed mattress? Yes. The entire bed frame? No. I’m such a slacker. But in my defense, I’ve also been cleaning out drawers and cabinets.

It’s ended up taking much more time than I anticipated, mainly because it was a lot dirtier than I’d like to admit. Some of these things hadn’t been cleaned in years. (Anytime I want to really be inspired to clean, I watch an episode of Hoarders. Suddenly. I morph into a cleaning machine. Didn’t need to do it this time–my house was dirty enough all on its lonesome.) It also didn’t help that I kept coming across new and interesting problems to solve, like the discovery that three of my speakers had been helpfully “disconnected” by the mice, so I had to stop and splice wires back together. Joy!

The good news is that it’s all cleaned now, and I’m feeling much better about things. (I know–you were so worried.) I’d really like to avoid this kind of binge cleaning in the future. My current plan? I’ve divided the house into 6 parts and assigned each part a month on a twice-a-year rotating schedule. That way, every part of the house will be cleaned twice a year, and I won’t have to do it all at once. (And when I do it, it won’t take forever to do.)

In any case, yay for a clean house. I feel better and think better when things are in order. Not sure if I’m alone in that, but once things get to a certain point, if I don’t clean things, I just don’t feel like I can function. (On the other hand, I think that point for me is fairly more cluttered and dusty than the point is for many other people . . .)

And on that note, I’m going to go enjoy the rest of my vacation. See you all Monday!