Ladies and gentlemen, last week I did something I haven’t been able to do in many long months: I turned the heat off in my apartment. All of a sudden, my skin no longer weeps when I step outside, I am wearing shoes that do not require socks and I have officially placed my ice scraper back into the trunk of my car where it belongs.
That’s right. Spring is here and I am, as they say, “into it.”
Because a change in seasons requires that I adhere to all sorts of clichés, I spent my Sunday spring-cleaning. I dragged my sorry tush out of bed, brushed my teeth and proceeded to bleach the entirety of my apartment.
I could tell you that I sprang to action with a bottle Windex and roll of paper towels out of sheer motivation and desire to live in a sanitary environment, but let’s be honest: the only reason to deep-clean anything is to put off beginning any other arduous tasks you have at the top of your to-do list. My bathroom may be immaculate, but there was an enormous pile of homework staring me down while I folded laundry.
During my foray into domestication, I came across many items I had not seen either _a)_ in several months or _b)_ ever. Because I couldn’t think of anything better to write about this week, I’d like to share the hoard of things I found.
· While vacuuming my bedroom and the living room, I counted approximately 635,000 assorted hair clips, bobby pins and hair ties.
· A soggy bag of what I believe was once bean sprouts was hiding in the crisper drawer of my refrigerator, which is interesting to me mainly because no one in my house eats bean sprouts.
· Every sock I’ve ever lost managed to resurface from within the depths of whatever abyss they were lost in.
· About 13 dollars in change was counted from various nooks and crannies around my desk.
· Six empty shampoo bottles, all sitting in the corner of my shower like a graveyard for empty bottles.
· All of the coffee mugs from our kitchen were sitting on my nightstand, each with its own sticky remnants covering the bottom.
· An absurd amount of cat hair was found, considering my cat lives with my mother, two hours away.
· An embarrassing amount of cookie crumbs between my bed sheets.
· More bobby pins.
· Seven tubes of lip balm.
· Nine copies of The Maneater, under my desk, placed there with intentions of being put into some sort of organized portfolio.
· Some Christmas gifts that should have been wrapped and mailed about four months ago.
· 28 various pens and pencils.
· Finally I happened upon a kiwi-sized wad of dust and hair hiding under my bed. It looked like it may have been respiring. I call him Chuck, and he is currently living in a shoebox on top of my desk. When he grows up, I may sell him to the biology department as an experiment on the evolution of unicellular organisms.
I guess I could call this a lesson in domestic hygiene, but this column still arrived to my editor late, so my mission in procrasti-cleaning was successful. My bathroom reeks of bleach, and I found the socks I’d been looking for, so not all was lost.