Spring Cleaning 2007 - The Agony, The Ecstasy

Ok, so yesterday I took the day off. I went to dinner with BFF, came home and watched the finale of the Coyote Ugly show, the "casting special" for the Real World Las Vegas reunion (I am both tremendously excited for the train wreck that this promises to be as well as horrified at myself for being excited), watched Sweet Home Alabama, complete with commercial breaks, and then talked to A., who had a horrible, horrible night with her current main squeeze. I think I made her feel a bit better, at least.

Then I went to sleep (though I didn't get a very good night's sleep - combination of bed-hog kitty as well as weird dreams), talked to my mom on the phone, went back to sleep, and then began again with the cleaning. I've decided that I just have to deal with the living room and dining room first even though the bedroom still isn't totally done - I think the thing with the bedroom stuff I've yet to do is that it's tedious, and so I think that I'll return to it when I'm feeling close-to-done rather than trying to motivate myself to do it when I'm feeling demoralized about the common rooms of the house. (Although, that's kind of a weird way of putting it, because really all of the rooms in my house are common rooms as my roommate totally runs the show, as he's a cat. There's just no privacy in this place.)

So I organized the big front closet, and now it's time to move the goodwill stuff in there to get it out of the way. Then I'm going to take out some trash, then deal with the living room and dining room. From there, we shall see.

You may be wondering what I've been listening to as I do all this cleaning. Well. The soundtrack has mainly included:

• Bloc Party's *A Weekend in the City*
• Bright Eyes' *Cassadaga*
• Lucinda Williams' *Car Wheels on a Gravel Road*

And I'm not sure what else. Perhaps I'll do a fuller soundtrack to cleaning post when I'm further along. But now back to it.

Update:
Ok, listening to Cassadaga again. One of my favorite songs on the CD - "Hot Knives" - is on. My favorite lyrics:

"When I do wrong I am with God, she thought
When I feel lost I am not at all

So give me Black Light (Give Give me)
So give me Hot Knives (Deep Clean sleep)
On a dance floor no one tells time (There is no time)

Oh, I've made love, yeah, I've been fucked, so what?
I'm a cartoon, you're a full moon, let's stay up"

But so the living room is done except for vacuuming and cleaning the picture window, The dining room is done except for minimal mail sort of stuff on the table and vacuuming. The bedroom remains a tragedy, but I have high hopes. All of the books in the home of crazy are reshelved. Somehow. I need another bookshelf.

Right now, though, what I need more than another bookshelf is a teensy break. This is a mistake, as I've still got the kitchen and the bedroom, but I'm thinking that it's ok if I procrastinate a wee bit as I HAVE NO PLACE I HAVE TO BE TOMORROW! I realize that this is not exactly a newsflash, but I think I'm finally realizing that it's actually summer. I'm so happy that I've weeded so much shit out of my life, and also enjoying finding things as I go through pictures and things. Most awesome has been my review of the many hairstyles of Crazy (am so happy with my hair right now), my review of exes long forgotten (which reminds me of an idea I had once that I'd get a big picture frame and include pics of all of my exes in a kind of hilarious composite-boyfriend art object, though I'm not the sort who actually puts pictures in frames, so I suspect this will never get beyond the "idea" stage), and realizing that as much as I'm a pack-rat I really do weed out a lot of stuff and I don't hang on to the crap that weighs me down as much as I might. Huge sense of accomplishment arising from the weeding out.

So, what else shall I accomplish today?

1) Finish the stupid closet in my bedroom.
2) Finish the dining room table and clean the ceiling fan.
3) Clean the picture window in the living room.
4) run the dishwasher and clean the kitchen counters.

This is a totally doable list. And more than enough to be going on with.

Tomorrow, I'll finish the kitchen (including weeding out and reorganizing of cabinets, cleaning refridgerator, mopping the floor and cleaning the stove). Then, I'll finish the bedroom (dusting, windows), and then I'll vacuum the whole establishment. I really need to get my carpets cleaned, so also tomorrow I will get that scheduled as well as scheduling a charity pick-up of all the crap that I'm getting rid of that's not garbage.

Now, lest you think that I'm the most efficient person in the world, I decided to forgo filing, so I do have some crates of paper shit that are not terribly organized. I figure that all in all this is not the worst thing in the world, and clearly is something I can accomplish once the Major Cleaning is done. Why can I accomplish it later? Because it is summer! Hurrah!

Oh, and another of those tasks I've put off is reorganizing CDs, but again, this is not an urgent matter in the age of the iPod.

So, that's the update on my progress. I feel like it's boring, but people seem to be enjoying the spring cleaning posts, and it helps me to write it all out, so there we are.

Now I'm going to relax for about another half hour, and then back to it!