Spring Cleaning

Yesterday was a lovely, rainy Saturday in Austin. Usually I want my Saturdays to be sunny and clear so I can go out and enjoy all that this beautiful city has to serve up for outdoor fun and adventure. Yesterday, though, my agenda included something I completely dread: spring cleaning.

I guess "spring cleaning" implies that it's an annual event. Well...maybe not so much at my house. I like things clean and neat, it's not that, it's just that I have a little bit of a problem with accumulating crap stuff that I don't really need and sticking it in odd places, so I end up with all that random stuff crammed into various nooks and crannies.

Hmmm...why am I admitting this to y'all?

Anyway, I apparently have a hard time getting rid of things and the evidence eventually overwhelms me and I have to just tear the place apart, purge, clean and then put it all back together again.

Tackling my bathroom cabinets was my agenda for the day and I so wish I'd thought to take a picture of my bathroom floor when I was midway through. (Hmmm...is it weird that I wish I had a picture of my messy bathroom? Maybe it's a good sign that I didn't take one.)

The mess I made and the collection of products I dragged out? Impressive. Well, impressive in crazy bag lady kind of way. Am I the only one who can't throw out any sort of product unless it's completely used up?? I'm talking about the gagillion hair/skin products that I buy, don't like or retire and yet hold on to for, apparently, decades. I mean, how many loofahs does a gal need? Second only to the slew of facial "toners" and scented lotions that I've managed to accumulate. Please...comment and tell me if you do this, too. We can form a support group.

It took much longer than I expected, but I finally got through it. I'm embarrassed to admit that I ended up with two trash bags full of crap trash! Whew.

The process has me thinking about other things--those that aren't tangible--that I might be holding on to. Expectations, fears, dreams, relationships, and ideas that I've crammed into the nooks and crannies of my heart and mind that are just cluttering things up. Things that I hold on to just because I think that someday I might actually have the perfect occasion to drag out and "wear". Things that, like all those eye creams I never used, need to be tossed to the curb.

When I finished up my bathroom I was so pooped (uh, no pun intended!) that I rushed through my weekly cleaning by vacuuming around the edges of the other piles that I haven't dealt with yet.

And I'm OK with that. I'll save that for another rainy day. My "internal" spring cleaning? That will just have to be a work in progress.