(no subject)
So, this will come as a shock to those of you who know me best: I've been cleaning. A lot. Everything I can touch, basically.
For the past month or so I'd been spending more and more time in Daniel's dorm room. He was busy and often scheduling and otherwise wouldn't work out for us to sleep together at the house, not to mention his cat allergy. Slowly as I spent more time there, I began to neglect my own house. Now, it wasn't great to begin with, as you might guess: clothes on the floor, jewelry and makeup cluttering the sink, cat hair on everything... but because I spent less and less time there, I cleaned up the easy stuff less and less frequently. Last week Tuesday I got incredibly, awfully sick, and tissues began piling up next to the bed. I laid around in bed for three days with the norovirus, thinking "everything I touch is disgusting, oh god, oh god, there's filth everywhere! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!" and really began to notice exactly how much I'd let my living space slip.
So as soon as I was healthy, I began cleaning. It started with clearing the floor (piling up all of my dirty clothes on one spot, picking up all the trash, and vacuuming). The clothes pile has been going down slowly as I wash a load here or there, and then bring it up folded and put it away. There were - and this is disgusting - three bags of trash out of my room just on that first day. Old papers and bills, my hundreds of tissues, old cracker boxes, and all of the things the cats have peed on (which included an unfortunate number of books) all made their way into kitchen-sized trash bags and out the door. The first four loads of laundry were done (including the sheets and pillow cases).
But I didn't stop there. I wanted Daniel to spend more time there, so I lint-rolled the mattress and the pillows, and then lint-rolled the pillow cases themselves after they were clean because they had spent some time on the floor while I was making the bed. I vacuumed again. I started organizing the closet and the surfaces of dressers and tables.
But today, today is the real achievement. It's been a week since I got sick and realized I hated being gross, and the feeling still hadn't gone away. Today, I cleaned the bathroom.
The. Whole. Thing. I cleaned the toilet, inside and out. I got down on my knees and cleaned the base of the toilet and the tub. I got inside the tub and cleaned out the grime. I cleared off the sick (a truly herculean effort) and washed the counter and sink. This was especially difficult because while the counter has two sinks, only one has running water, and the other tends to... collect... debris. Cat food from months ago, bobby pins, razor blades, earrings, and a miscellanea of tags, wrappers, stickers, and bags all find their way down to the bottom of the broken sink, cluttering and clogging it. Not to mention Daniel's mess from cleaning up after charcoal drawings, leaving a fine black powder over everything for more than three months.
It was awesome. I am awesome. And I'm not done. There's still laundry, and the dresser and table tops are irritatingly cluttered. Daniel's vacuum sucks, but not in the good-for-cleaning way, and every time I walk around the room my eyes go narrow and squinty and I know I need to vacuum again with a more powerful machine. The closet floor is still a mess. And everything - DEAR FUCKING LORD, EVERYTHING, HOW DID IT GET THIS BAD - needs dusting.
I am on a mission. For the first time in my life - for serious, ever - I have felt the need to better my physical surroundings in a way that doesn't involve drawing on the walls. PRAISE ME, GODDESS OF TIDINESS.
For the past month or so I'd been spending more and more time in Daniel's dorm room. He was busy and often scheduling and otherwise wouldn't work out for us to sleep together at the house, not to mention his cat allergy. Slowly as I spent more time there, I began to neglect my own house. Now, it wasn't great to begin with, as you might guess: clothes on the floor, jewelry and makeup cluttering the sink, cat hair on everything... but because I spent less and less time there, I cleaned up the easy stuff less and less frequently. Last week Tuesday I got incredibly, awfully sick, and tissues began piling up next to the bed. I laid around in bed for three days with the norovirus, thinking "everything I touch is disgusting, oh god, oh god, there's filth everywhere! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!" and really began to notice exactly how much I'd let my living space slip.
So as soon as I was healthy, I began cleaning. It started with clearing the floor (piling up all of my dirty clothes on one spot, picking up all the trash, and vacuuming). The clothes pile has been going down slowly as I wash a load here or there, and then bring it up folded and put it away. There were - and this is disgusting - three bags of trash out of my room just on that first day. Old papers and bills, my hundreds of tissues, old cracker boxes, and all of the things the cats have peed on (which included an unfortunate number of books) all made their way into kitchen-sized trash bags and out the door. The first four loads of laundry were done (including the sheets and pillow cases).
But I didn't stop there. I wanted Daniel to spend more time there, so I lint-rolled the mattress and the pillows, and then lint-rolled the pillow cases themselves after they were clean because they had spent some time on the floor while I was making the bed. I vacuumed again. I started organizing the closet and the surfaces of dressers and tables.
But today, today is the real achievement. It's been a week since I got sick and realized I hated being gross, and the feeling still hadn't gone away. Today, I cleaned the bathroom.
The. Whole. Thing. I cleaned the toilet, inside and out. I got down on my knees and cleaned the base of the toilet and the tub. I got inside the tub and cleaned out the grime. I cleared off the sick (a truly herculean effort) and washed the counter and sink. This was especially difficult because while the counter has two sinks, only one has running water, and the other tends to... collect... debris. Cat food from months ago, bobby pins, razor blades, earrings, and a miscellanea of tags, wrappers, stickers, and bags all find their way down to the bottom of the broken sink, cluttering and clogging it. Not to mention Daniel's mess from cleaning up after charcoal drawings, leaving a fine black powder over everything for more than three months.
It was awesome. I am awesome. And I'm not done. There's still laundry, and the dresser and table tops are irritatingly cluttered. Daniel's vacuum sucks, but not in the good-for-cleaning way, and every time I walk around the room my eyes go narrow and squinty and I know I need to vacuum again with a more powerful machine. The closet floor is still a mess. And everything - DEAR FUCKING LORD, EVERYTHING, HOW DID IT GET THIS BAD - needs dusting.
I am on a mission. For the first time in my life - for serious, ever - I have felt the need to better my physical surroundings in a way that doesn't involve drawing on the walls. PRAISE ME, GODDESS OF TIDINESS.