Spring Cleaning

It’s been a while since I got a second to post in here, and I thought I’d better before Google decides it’s an empty warehouse and yanks it from their servers.  I’ve been cleaning.  It’s been eye-opening.  And eye-watering, from all the dust.

Ever wonder how you accumulate so much crap over the years?  I know there’s such a thing as keeping things for sentimental reasons, but seriously…how many family Christmas cards do you need to open and sigh over before you have enough boxes of them to build a jet hanger?  How many stuffed animals do you need to coo over (“Ohhhh, look at widdle teddy!”) before widdle teddy smothers you one night in your sleep?  Last week I just had to grab my past by its balls – or whatever appendage it has – and say, in the immortal words of Queen Elsa of Arendelle, “Let It Go.”

Get that crap outta my house.

The purge began slowly, and the first thing that went was probably 15 years of dust on my desk in the hallway.  Hey, I don’t dust unless I absolutely have to.  With three cats in the house, it’s fruitless.  So, armed with my trusty vacuum cleaner (which scares the living shit out of the cats, and kept them out of my way), I sucked up nearly an entire canister of dust, dead stinkbugs, and unidentifiable sprinklings of questionable substances.  Then I went through 2 bottles of Pledge Multi-Surface Cleaner Spray – which just let me spray everything because I was too damned lazy to go find the Windex and Old English and all the other cleaners – and several dusting cloths, which had to be thrown away because God knows my laundry machine would have run screaming for hills when it saw the amount of crud it was to clean off of these things. 

Two days later, I had four boxes of old video tapes that we hadn’t watched in years, another of books that had lost their charm (seriously, who reads The Chronicles of Narnia in chronological order?), stuffed animals, jewelry I never wear, old tools, stationery (remember how we used to write actual letters to people?), and lots and lots of other stuff.  I was pretty proud of my accomplishment and was ready to turn everything in to Goodwill that afternoon.  But in this cleaning journey, I found out that even though letting go of some of your past is necessary, other parts of it just have to stay.

I found out that I had several miniature piano figurines, two of which were matching music boxes that played “Memory” from Cats.  One of them has my name engraved on it.  I have no idea who gave them to me, but when I wound one up and it tinkled out that lovely song, I cleaned it and set it back on the shelf. Another had gorgeous Chinese enamel that had been buried under the aforementioned dust, and was lined with golden silk.  Inside was a charm pendant with my initials carved on it, which I realized my mother had given me for my high school graduation.  I always wondered what had happened to it, and always assumed it had fallen off of one of my necklaces.  Needless to say, that went into my jewelry box immediately.

Underneath the clutter on my desk (which included my Bingo basket, a Mickey Mouse hat, and a small fire extinguisher, for starters) were several of those little cards they give out at funeral homes when you go to a viewing.  I can never throw these away, it just seems wrong to do so.  I always put them in my big desk Bible, along with obituaries, in the section with Psalm 23, so that's where these went too.

A box under my desk was covered in cobwebs and dust.  Inside was every award I have ever won at work, including pictures of me receiving such awards with old bosses, some of whom have died.  They were restacked in the now-clean box, and the pictures were carefully stored in a folder beside them.   

Two old dolls on one of the bookshelves were dressed in Disney princess gowns that I’d purchased back in the late 90’s.  The dresses were so covered in dust that they needed to be vacuumed off, and they pretty much disintegrated when I tried.  I remembered I had a box somewhere with these dolls’ dresses in it – something I’ve had since I was 7 years old and hadn’t opened in God knows when.  After about 20 minutes of searching, I finally found it, under my bed, and it was hilarious to see the old “Keep Out!  This Means You!” signs and stickers I had all over it.  Inside were three old baby blankets – one that my grandmother had knitted, and two that my sister used to use in her doll pram when we were very little.  There were all the clothes, all made by my grandmother – capes, dresses, shoes.  I sat there for a long time, unfolding and holding up little doll dresses.  I also saw there were miniature dolls tucked in the corner, swaddled, with heads on a Swiss-dotted doll pram pillow, and wee little stuffed animals – a bunny and a chick – “sleeping” beside them, and recalled that all of my dolls used to have dolls and toys of their own.  They were still tucked in.  They’d been like that for years.  I suddenly had a childish impulse that if I moved them, I’d wake them up, and I couldn’t bear to do that.

I found two little matching dresses and took a long time dressing these old dolls, combing their hair, putting on their shoes.  I put them back in their holders and set them back on the book case and on impulse, I stuck their hands together.  I swear they smiled at me.  A week later, they’re still holding hands, and I smile back as I walk past.

Memories are something, aren’t they? 

And yes, I found about 10 family Christmas cards…and yes, they’re going in the box in the shed.  I have two boxes full, and this one’s about full.  Some things just can’t be tossed.  Guess I’d better start on that jet hanger.

Enjoy your own spring cleaning journey.

--Rebecca