Cleanin' up shop!

Where did the concept of "spring cleaning" originate? Bursts of energy related to seeing the sun for the first time in months? A desire to prevent a new crop of bugs from seeking shelter in kitchen cupboards? BOTH GREAT GUESSES. But for me, the biggest impetus is shame.

I'll let you in on a secret. It's in my blood to be a hot mess till company's coming, and then I tend to employ a time-honored family tradition. Of jamming everything in bags and then jamming the bags in the closets. It's entirely possible that if I never welcomed you lovely people into my home, I'd take the same approach to homekeeping that I did as a tween. Which is to say, to never clean.

"Eff this, I'm busy listening to Jewel."

I had a lot of conversations that ran along the lines of: Parents tell me to clean --> I immediately do not want to clean. Even if I was going to before parents told me to. Maturity, people.

LUCKILY, I like you. And want you to come over. And have blossomed from reactant tween into a self-conscious disciple of Martha Stewart. But even the best intentioned of aspiring nonslobs may feel too overwhelmed (read: lazy) to just scrub a whole house from attic to basement. And it's likely that the whole thing doesn't even need that special of a treatment. So I've decided to focus on just a few key projects that I think will make a big difference but ... er, may not have made it into a particularly "regular" routine. Or, you know, have ever been completed since we moved in. Hypothetically.

1) Cleaning the stairs. If you've ascended the stairs in our home, you know that they laugh in the face of injury prevention. They're shallow. And steep. And this has apparently led us to grind and scuff our shoes in as if smearing on Half Dome just to gain some stability.

"I just wanted to go to the bathroom!"

Goals: Take the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to the scuff marks - the stairs are painted and this should be gentle enough. Use the stairs without thinking to myself, "Someday I should clean these."

2) De-staining the couch. Kids these days. So optimistic. They just shack up, hold hands in Value City Furniture, and imagine that their off-white canvas couch will remain pristine. Never mind, bright-eyed dweller, that your jeans come with a tag that's basically an apology printed on a stop sign. Or that your idea of normal adult communication is to shake your sister's whole body by her knees while forgetting about the coffee she's holding. Most noticeably, my jeans have really rubbed off on the couch. Not in a good-influence, now-the-couch-engages-in-volunteer-work way. In a, "Wow, you really sit on that couch a lot, dontcha?" way.

Goals: Make magic happen with a super-cheap upholstery cleaner from Target with an adorable dog on the label. Give off the impression that I've gotten off the couch in the past calendar year.

I'd run away with you... if we didn't have to run.

3) De-hoarding my junk stashes. You know what I'm talking bout. Those piles, or drawers, or bags, or other little areas that are so well stashed, their creators forget about them. But your house doesn't. They're just lingering, waiting for you to move again and shamefully pack them into another box and haul to your next place of residence. No more!

Goals: There are two spots in particular that I'm going to sort through. And I'm prepared to be ruthless. I'd tell you exactly where they are, but then I'd have to jam you in a bag and then jam the bag in a closet.