Spring Cleaning

You would think that having a maid who comes three days a week would help keep our home neat, tidy, and free of clutter. Well, if you thought that, then you obviously don’t know us very well! Hours after clearing a counter, clutter will magically appear to mess it up again. And it drives me nuts.

Before we begin, I should admit that I am not the tidiest of people. (Hush, Mother!) I throw my clothes on my dresser or in a pile on the floor. I take of my necklaces and leave them scattered around the apartment. My shoes can always be found under the coffee table in the living room – where I usually take them off and forget about them.

While my slob-transgressions are numerous, I am obsessively orderly. All of my papers are neatly stacked so I know where to go back to find them. All of our books and DVDs are alphabetic or otherwise arranged so that I know where each and every one is located at a moment’s notice. I can also tell if someone has moved my things by so little as a millimeter – not that I’m obsessive like that. I realize that people might call it OCD but I prefer the term organized.

Which brings us to what we did on Sunday…

Since all of my attempts at tidying up small areas backfired this week, I instituted a spring-cleaning day. The first order of business was Hubby’s office, which has become our catchall place to put things when we don’t have anywhere else to put them. Consequently, there isn’t a spare inch of space on his huge desk, and even the shelves and the top of the safe have become dens of disorganized clutter.

While Hubby attacked that big project, I started in on all of the little fires throughout the apartment. The junk drawers, the paper piles, our kitchen counter that had become a black hole of junk, and even my own messes – like the book shelf in the guest room which wasn’t alphabetical. *gasp*

I realize that I use a liberal amount of literary license in this blog but Hubby is forcing me to own up to something today. He was the good boy who cleaned his office and I was the naughty girl who barely started her list of jobs. In my defense, I want to point out that I was working on various projects for the Association, which took me away from cleaning. (Anyone buying that excuse? Anyone?!) Oh well…

The best part of our spring-cleaning plan is that it is actually springtime here in Kenya. Nothing beats a bit of timely tidying.