It's spring – time to clean
When you're a neat freak, spring is the time to organize everything in the house.
By Karen Lelandfrom the March 24, 2008 edition
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To me, the first day of spring always signals the official start of the spring-cleaning season. It's the national thumbs up to the population at large (not just the neat-freak group, of which I am a proud card-carrying member) to clean out their files, organize their closets, and straighten up the storage room. Ladies and gentlemen, start your vacuum cleaners!
I usually begin my spring cleaning with something seemingly innocuous such as my pencil cup. A few deep breaths, some wrist exercises (four turns to the left, four to the right), and I am good to go.
With laserlike focus I test each pencil, pen, and highlighter to see if they still have what it takes to remain a tenant in my pencil cup. Parker ballpoint pen, ink running a bit spotty – you're history! Red Sharpie looking pale and weak – it's over. Faded yellow highlighter, I see you hiding behind the Bic Matic Grip pencil – into the trash you go.
I show no mercy as I diligently ready my pencil cup for the season ahead. It will be a lean, mean desktop machine, ready to write pithy and powerful prose, sign cashable checks, and doodle during boring conference calls.
Juiced up and brimming with clean-pencil-cup energy, I stride confidently to my clothes closet for what I assume will be a mere touch-up. Wrong! Glancing inside, I cannot believe that my wardrobe is in this much disarray – again.
I pick up a pair of black pants lying crumpled at my feet entangled with my running shoes and a small gold evening bag. "Do you like living like this?" I chastise them.
Even worse, several shirts have managed to migrate (on their own, it seems to me) from the dormant fall-winter closet down the hall to my active spring-summer closet.
"All right," I tell myself, "don't panic. Just start pairing up socks and putting them back where they belong, and no one will get hurt." After two hours of sorting and sifting, my clothes closet is at last certified spring-clean.
Having confronted my wardrobe and won, I joyously ride the energy wave to the pièce de résistance of all spring-cleaning projects – the garage. Changing into a faded blue work shirt, I fling open the door and scream, "Oh, this is going to be more difficult than I thought!"
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