Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The Giant 72-Hour Cleaning Project

I have spent the last three days cleaning, organizing and de-cluttering the entire apartment. I should say first that Joel deserves a lap dance for grinning and bearing it. He is firmly of the "ignorance is bliss" camp when it comes to housekeeping, but he really stuck with me on this. And we are DONE.

Every single closet is organized. We vacuumed under the bed. The spinning lazy susan cabinet in the kitchen actually spins. We have neatly organized baskets of categorized objects formerly known as clutter. We cleaned an inch of dust off the top of the fridge. I windexed a seemingly clear window and the wet wipe was BLACK after two passes.

(Who wants to visit?!? Come on, who?!)

Honestly, I vacuum, dust, mop the floors, scrub the bathroom and wipe down the counters aqnd sinks once a week. I bleach the cat box religiously. The pets are bathed more frequently than I suspect the Marxist artist guy with the lip ring I dated for a week fall of freshman year did. (No, not the mohawk guy who worked at Adult World and played the tuba. He actually always smelled like Tide and Listerine. No one who reads this ever met the Marxist artist guy. On purpose.) And yet somehow this Giant 72-Hour Cleaning Project was revealed to be, um, very very necessary. I scrubbed behind the toilet! I am way too excited about this.

I answered all the emails I've owed people for months. I filed bills that I paid in November. I'm caught up with wedding clients. I also changed around all the artwork. The photos in frames have all been updated. The Christmas decorations are finally put away. Joel's nerdy collection of shot glasses from National Parks (sorry, he's taken, ladies ;) are finally displayed in their special cabinet that we hadn't found the time to put up since he moved in last May. I took a carload of books, clothes, and miscellanous things we just don't need to the Salvation Army today.

We went through all the old sheets, towels and cat toys left for dead behind the fridge and gave two full bags of donations to the humane society. Interestingly enough, the fitted sheets always seem to get little holes in them while the top sheets never do. That's almost definitely the work of certain quadrapeds with pointy pointy feet who like to hide under the covers. I suppose it's their way of giving back to the homeless pet community- put itty bitty holes in the sheets that become big holes in the sheets so that the sheets get taken to other homeless pets. Or something.

I'm really, really tired.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I picked up a used copy of Madden NFL 2005 for PS2 for $3 and played that all weekend. I even created my own team.

Unknown said...

LAP DANCE! Yay for Joel!

And seriously, Ernie would like to "thank" you for inspiring the same sort of cleaning frenzy in me, except we're dragging it out over an entire week instead of three days.
Really. He'd like to "thank" you. I'm sure he'll be saying lovely things when we finally fill our new bookshelves, empty out boxes and put our office in order tonight.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations. I am so jealous. For the past month, our house has looked like we've been the victims of some tragic junk mail/baby gear/random techie crap (thanks, Dave!) explosion. I'm too embarassed to have our housekeeper come clean until I can get the clutter under control. THAT is sad.

Anonymous said...

Hey Angie. Could you come out and help clean my place? I need the motivation as Loki's yearly molting has made my place look like I have an un-natural obsession with shag rugs.

-Jason

Anonymous said...

ANGIE RULES!!! WOOOOOOOOOOT!!!

I have to admit that I felt a slight twinge of jealousy for your dedication to the SUPER GIANTIC CLEANOUT. Just like they say, "Some day my prince will come," someday our office will be a useable space! :)