Buh-Bye Sasquatch; Until Next Week…

I started this morning with one goal: to clean the master bedroom. For some reason our master bedroom has been the go-to dumping ground for the twelve blissful years I’ve been married. I’m not laying blame anywhere-honestly it’s mostly me. Cleaning rooms in the house is on a priority system:

1. The living room, kitchen, and entryway since this is what anyone who comes to the house will see upon first impression.
2. The hall bathroom since hypothetical guests could potentially use it, however you remember what happened the last time I only cleaned the hall bathroom. That’s right, my son took it over and the guest used the dirty bathroom downstairs. Now it’s on the list, moved in with the hall commode at #2.
3. The kid’s rooms. Mostly because their friends are over playing, we need to find homework, or I’m tired of twisting my ankle on clarinet cases and glitter balls at 10 p.m. when trying to say goodnight to the kids.
4. The office and toy room. I’m not really motivated to clean these rooms, mainly because the toy room always looks like a garage sale gone bad, and the office is attached to it. I figure the kids need at least one room to be messy in, and I work so sporadically from my office desk (preferring to sit upstairs and type on the couch) it’s not a huge motivator. This, and I can blame the entire contents and state of those rooms on my children, not my lack of housekeeping.
5. The master bathroom. I don’t use this and rarely clean it. The master bathroom was the architect’s way of “sticking it to the man” since it is so small we should refer to it as the Toilet Closet. A moment of visualization: when my husband is shaving, his stomach touches the sink while his butt grazes the back wall. It’s a thumbnail of a bathroom if ever I’ve seen one and I quit using it about two weeks after moving in. There is something nice about taking a shower without your elbows hitting the tiles as you wash your hair. Call me a princess. So this reigns unimportant at #5.
6. Master bedroom. Here it is. Finally. This is where I’ve relegated the main sleeping room in our home. Way down here at number six. Now all I need to mention is that in the last 10 months I’ve only ever made it to #4. The reason it's here and not before the master bathroom (which I rarely clean) is that the bathroom tends to stink first. Just so you know what I'm dealing with. If it doesn't stink and noone's going to see it, why bother cleaning it?

That saying “it gets worse before it gets better” never applied more than when cleaning this room. There were seven loads of dirty laundry heaped in the center of the room which I sorted into colorful piles in the hallway. I vacuumed the floors and then dusted and washed them with the Swiffer. I dusted all surfaces in the room which required me to move all the crap from the dresser onto the bed. The sheets need to be changed, but I can’t do that until the floor has dried and I trash/organize/put things back on the dressers not to mention wash all the laundry since we only use one set of sheets. The floors are bare and clean, but my hallway is now inaccessible due to the laundry piles, vacuum, laundry hamper, bag of trash, and bag for the attic. I’m two loads of laundry in and the clean piles are now heaped onto the beloved pool table downstairs that now serves as laundry-folding-central-station.

I’m also battered-dipped head-to-toe in fuzzy, dusty, lint from slaying the Sasquatch under my bed. I think I’ve mentioned him before. He’ll be back all too soon though—no more than a couple weeks—since the weather is nice and the windows are open. I’m wearing a black long sleeved shirt. Note to self: black shirt is  not preferred cleaning wardrobe, unless you are planning on attending a costume party dressed as a used Swiffer pad. Which would probably win you a Most Creative Costume award.

I’m going to clean it right since another 6-8 months will pass before this room feels the soft cloth on it’s hardwoods, or is tickled by the wet mop again.

 

So here it is. The final room. I know, you're asking yourself, "What kind of self-aggrandizing sicko takes pictures of results from cleaning? Isn't that her job as a stay-at-home mother?" Well I'd counter that with "What kind of self-depricating sicko admits to the world that she only cleans her bedroom once annually?" It's not to boast; rather it serves as CYA documentation to child protection agencies who may suspect my children live in filfth and squalor daily, and also as photographic proof that my bedroom at one time in history was clean. Chances are good if you come visit, instead showing you the bedroom during the house tour I'll simply point to the 8x10 glossies on the door and assure you there's nothing illegal going back there. Enjoy it while you can.