Saturday and cleaning house

Cleaning the house. Not cleaning house. Although we'll be getting rid of GrandMa Marjorie Rubenstein, aka Large Marge the Barge soon, the only cleaning I'm doing is the regular housework.

Before I got started this morning I enjoyed a chat with Nancy, our neighbor across the street. We talked for over an hour and a half. I'm not a procrastinator. But the sun was shining in a small circle of blue sky right over us. It had already rained this morning and was going to rain this afternoon (they were right! It's raining as I type this), so I had to enjoy the sun while it was out.

Eventually I did come back inside. I cleaned the bathroom and then deliberately looked at the clock before starting the vacuuming. I had mentioned to Nancy that it takes me an hour to vacuum. She called me ocd, so I had to figure out where I got that number from.

I did the upstairs in fifteen minutes.

When I came downstairs, I realized I needed to dust first. I got everything dusted in ten minutes (thanks to Bill's 2003 Knick-Knack Reduction Act - you can look for that story in the future on the Blah, Blah, Blog). I had started to vacuum and had gotten as far as the entry when the skies opened up. While I wait for the lightning and thunder to pass, I thought I'd write a post on cleaning.

I shared with Nancy something I learned from Martha; before you have company (specifically a party) you shouldn't waste time doing your floors. A quick sweep will suffice. Focus more on the bathroom. Your company will likely track in dirt so you'll just have to vacuum the floors after they leave. It's justifiable. I mean, yeah vacuum them. But don't go scrubbing your floors and polishing them, and making them all purr-ty. They're just going to get dirty. And I'm not pointing fingers, but someone always drops food when they're here. That's fine. Please don't pick it up and eat it. That's reserved for those who live here and can weigh the last time the floors were cleaned vs. the amount of cat hair floating around.

I digress. So I try to clean once a week. The bathroom(s) get done and Bill has always helped with the vacuuming. Which is nice since he's not a proponent of owning two vacuums; one for upstairs, one for downstairs. Even with my propensity to fall going up and down the stairs. So, until we own two vacuums, he'll just have to keep on helping me with the cleaning.

The dusting gets done when we feel like it, you can see the layer of dust and I'm embarrassed, when the windows have been open and the layer of pollen is thick, or when the sneezing gets to be too much. So, not often. But again, because of the 2003 Knick-Knack Reduction Act and our super powered filter on the air-handler, it's not too bad.

Once a year, I do manage a spring-cleaning ritual. Curtains get aired out, rugs get moved and floors get mopped. I do a lot. I have a list for each room. That way I can be sure it gets done.

I don't think it's ocd, because I knew someone who cleaned her house every single day. She scrubbed her kitchen counters and ran the vacuum every morning before she came to work, and then would go home and do the rest. Ugh. That's too much. It's not necessary for me to be that clean. I mean, if I'm going to be honest (and I will be), today was the first day I've cleaned the house in a month. A month. Four weeks. Thirty days. It was past my "level", but we haven't been home. I haven't had the time...

And now it's stopped raining, so I'm going to go finish the vacuuming.