spring cleaning in autumn
i don’t know what came over me on saturday night. there i was, watching the telly, munching on a cookie, and suddenly.
zzzzzzip!
like something flew into my subconscience and scolded [probably in my mother's voice], “this place is an unholy flap of a mess, you lazy slobbering git, now get up off that couch and clean like your life depends on it.” on second thought, my mother’s much nicer about her scoldings. picture, instead, carol burnett of annie fame.
with threats about hot/cold mush and chrysler buildings batting around my frazzled mind, i suddenly started cleaning. putting on a cleaning-appropriate record [cleaning music includes but is not limited to elvis, josie and the pussycats, squirrel nut zippers, ben folds five and louis armstrong], i pushed up my shirt sleeves and:
reorganized my music cabinet/photo equiptment.
dusted and cleaned music/photo cabinet.
removed books/movies from book/movie shelf.
cleaned book/movie shelf.
reorganized books/movies.
cleaned wall-hangings [including all glass in photographs].
cleaned coffee tables/end tables.
reorganized coffee table Drawer of Doom.
vaccuumed floor/rug.
mopped hardwood floors.
scrubbed and cleaned baseboard molding.
vaccuumed upholstery chairs.
cleaned walls with disinfectant.
and that was just the living room. the kitchen required:
washed twenty dishes.
reorganized china cabinet.
cleaned all silverware, not just dirty silverware.
emptied out fridge of moldy produce.
emptied fridge.
cleaned fridge.
reorganized fridge.
cleaned stovetop.
cleaned counters.
toaster.
yep, blender.
bored yet?
floors.
cleaned and reorganized cooking-book cabinet.
varnished dining room table.
cleaned dining room window.
dusted vases and glassware.
although tendrils of realization re: my madness were starting to waft into my nose, i assumed this was simply a bi-product of the four different cleansing agents i was using, and the toxic fumes thereof. i mean, sure, i’d cleaned the resevoir of my coffee pot by percolating vinegar water in it [half a cup of white vinegar to 1.5 cups water, kids, let it run through the machine and then run two or three cycles of pure water - it takes all the clogged residue out of the pipes for a fresher, purer cup of coffee], i mean, sure, that seems like madness, but i needed delicious-tasting coffee, right?
but soon after, i stopped myself, because i realized at some point in my frenzied mad cleaning, i’d actually started windexing the spice bottles in my pantry cabinet. windex on the spice bottles. the worst part was, i had a good reason. growing increasingly loony, i actually said it aloud in the middle of my empty kitchen at four in the morning.
“well, you use the spices while you’re cooking. cooking grease gets on the plastic bottles and makes them smell funny. then the inside of the cabinet smells funny, and that’s where i keep my coffee and sugar, i don’t want those smelling funny.”
i’m off my head, kids. but when i simply collapse from the weight of lunacy and am found singing to the mommy dearest voices in my head, make sure you mop up the drool from the sparkling kitchen floor. hollander house floor-washing liquid does the trick nicely but make sure you use a white cotton help me.

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