Cleaning the House

This may surprise those who have known me as a child, but I'm a very clean, organized person. In fact, this may be a surprise to anyone who has known me before age 21. Something odd happened when I moved into my first apartment: I couldn't handle messes in my home. Now, never have I lived with roommates that share my passion for a clean house. Not to say my roommates have all been slobs, but they've definitely lived below my standards. I do what I can to encourage them to keep the place clean and I actually enjoy cleaning; it relaxes me. No matter what I do, I always will have to lower my standards of cleanliness when living with others, except for when I living with the Eyles family; they're crazier about cleanliness than I am.

I feared for the worst upon returning home. Based on past experiences and candid warnings by friends, I knew to expect a heart attack upon walking in the house; I prepared by taking lots of asprin. Manda knew this and thankfully spearheaded a massive cleaning push in the house before I returned home (she banned roommates from doing social activities so they could clean). They put hours into whipping the house into shape....the result, I had mild heart palpitations, but after sitting down and breathing into a paper bag, I narrowly avoided death at a young age. If what I came home to was the result of hours of cleaning, I won't even attempt to conjure any images of its state prior to this massive cleaning effort. So, simply put, the house was in no way up to my comfortable living standards. I do, however, appreciate everything they did.

I put aside the idea of finding a job for a week and dove into cleaning. My party was Friday and I wanted it to be presentable by then. The living room was not functional as a room at all, stuff, completely random stuff, had taken over every possible surface of the room. Every chair had a pile upon it, every table covered, the floor....I couldn't find it. The furniture didn't really have an arrangement, they were just in the space. As much as I wanted to tackle the living room first and sit down, I knew this would be a fatal mistake: one of the first rules of a massive cleaning project, clean the relaxation room last or else you'll find yourself watching some sort of movie.

Since I love to cook, I tackled the kitchen first. I didn't think it would be too bad, it looked the same as how I left it. At most, I calculated three hours. I made the finishing touches three days later. The kitchen was carefully orchestrated to look clean, but there was a great overflow of dishes and pantry items. Closer inspection revealed that the cupboards were not organized in any way. Every shelf was covered with things and much of the bowls, utensils, etc. had no home. Somehow, bath towels were living in various corners of the kitchen. After I was finished, everything fit and there were even shelves to spare! Behold the power of organization!

Next was the entry way, I first cleared the towels off the floor and started washing them. On my way downstairs, I noticed each individual stair had at least two towels on it. I grabbed these on my way and was just about to throw the towels into the washer, but found it was already filled with towels. I went to transfer the towels into the dryer, but this was also filled with towel. The floor of the basement was covered in towels as well. I took the towels out of the dryer folded them, then went upstairs to the towel shelf to find it packed full, even double rowed. I went to the towel overflow shelf (yes, we have enough towels to necessitate such a shelf) and found that full as well. So I took about 17 consecutive showers, used a different towel each time and delicately replaced them onto the basement floor, being sure to scatter them in a way that did not allow them make contact with each other. The sheer quantity of towels suggested that they are reproducing somehow, I just needed to experiment to find out if it was sexually or asexually. I started to do a mental inventory of how many towels might be in the house, but stop counting somewhere around 1,712.

I grabbed the duster from the utility corner, removed it from the packaging and started dusting all window sills and other areas. The house contains two dogs and three cats, so one can imagine what I found. At some point, I was able to clear a single chair in the living room and sat down for a cup of tea. I set the duster to the side of me; this was the last I ever saw it, even after cleaning the house, it is still missing. I believe the towels have evolved aerobic energy production. Once they develop the ability to move (and I can't prove they haven't) they will officially fit into the taxonomy of animals. (Note to self: write a letter to the international board of biological classification, look for my name in future textbooks)

Along the way, I swept the floors, forming massive piles of pet hair. At some point, I scooped up one of the piles and found it to be around 10lb! After the pile protested going into the garbage using a series of hisses and scratches, I realized that I had in fact swept up my cat Finnegan and not a pile of fur.

After my primary cleaning and organization of shelf, drawers and whatnot. All that was left was rearranging the furniture, which really didn't take too long. Overall, it only took me five days of eight hour cleaning shifts to get the house into an acceptable state for me to inhabit. Next step, systematized chore charts.