Spring cleaning, against my will.

i suppose it has to be done some time.

So, we have a prospective grad student coming to stay with us for a few days tomorrow. The very first thing i thought was, Shit! i gotta clean this place! Not that we live in a rat hole or anything, but– you know. If i was staying at someone's house and i went to peruse their bookshelf, only to come out sneezing from the ensuing dust cloud, yeah: i might be a little weirded out. And besides, like i (and others, i'm sure) always say: What better excuse to clean your house than company? i put on a Kraftwerk cassette (see? it pays to tidy up!) and got down to business.

Turns out that my definition of "a little dusting and tidying" is "acute and total overhaul". When you have a home filled with trinkets (read: very few bare flat spaces) and doo-dads, dusting is not a fun thing. Also, not having a duster doesn't help. But with my friends Wet Rag and Canned Air, i rocked the place, top to bottom. Found a few lost items (Nat's crazy math calculator, a co-worker's phone number hastily scrawled on a napkin, etc.), too, along the way.

In the middle of the fray, i stopped to make some tea. There were piles everywhere: old issues of Harper's, Things To Be Filed, miscellaneous paper scraps, philosophy papers, Pictures To Hang on Walls, and so on. it was overwhelming. i opened the silverware drawer for a spoon... and what i saw there gave me goosebumps.

It was freakin' filthy.

The plastic utensil holder itself (i know– classy!) was filled with almost as much loose tea leaves as flatware. At some point coffee had spilled into the drawer and some of the lesser-used items (corkscrew, Lame Dull Knife That i Hate and Have No Idea Why it's Even In There) were stained with it. Scads of plastic forks and spoons jeered up at me (you know you can't just throw us away!), and their little friends, the "disposable" chopsticks, laughed and taunted along with them. i braced myself for battle.

Half an hour later, the utensil holder lay drying in the sink, defeated. The silverware was lined up obediently on the counter, waiting to be put back in its place, and all the "picnic items", as i dubbed them, were in their own little bag, way up high, where i would (hopefully) never see them again. Why did i have ketchup packets from Jack-In-The-Box? Why do i buy soy sauce when i have like 34,325 packets of it from take-out just waiting to be used? Where did those two miniscule packets of black pepper even come from?!

i threw away Lame Dull Knife without even shedding a tear.

This 'Spring cleaning' thing's not so bad, after all. My apartment feels like a new, brighter and better place! CDs are with other CDs... my collection of bookmarks are all together, on the bookshelves! i finally threw away an old hand-drawn sticker i got when i was fourteen. Fourteen! It showed an anime-style girl, smiling and pointing a gun. i can't even remember who gave it to me. Why? Why do i still have this?

There are still Way Too Many Napkins in the silverware drawer (i always take home the ones they give you at restaurants/cafés, so i never buy paper towels), and i left the lone yellow mustard packet in there, just because. Nat's always making me buy that Dijon business... hmph. But order has been restored. No more dirty fingerprints on the cupboards or carbonized yam drippings in the oven. Hallelujah. Now i am free.

i highly recommend Acute and Total Overhaul to all of you. Happy dusting!