Randomness: Cleaning & Obsession Edition

I’m trying to get back into the daily-blogging groove, but I’m lacking for fodder so bear with me here. I need to grease the gears that make up my mad-word-smithing brain if this is going to happen. And sometimes that means random, mundane thoughts for your reading (dis)pleasure.

Someone really needs to clean and organize my pantry. Seriously. It’s like a food bomb went off in there. Absolutely no method to the madness. The over-abundance of zucchini relish — like, enough to last us until we die nine full lives — is not the least of the reasons for that. Anybody want some home-canned zucchini relish? It’s delicious. Just overly plentiful.

Speaking of cleaning, I have a confession to make: I clean everything the same way. Everything. I like to call it the Dyson Method. And, you know, I’m not trying to purport myself to be some kind of cleaning guru because Martha would have a stroke if she walked into this house, but it works. It keeps the place livable and that’s more than I can ask for with two kids, three dogs, a cat and two pretty-much full-time jobs to hold down.

I plug the handy-dandy Dyson into a central outlet and I go. to. town. I vacuum the floors of course, but it goes beyond that. I vacuum the crumbs off the counters, I vacuum the cat hair off the windowsills, I vacuum the cobwebs out of the corners. I even put the brush attachment on and vacuum the dust off the blinds. I’m not even kidding. Is it perfect? No, but perfect is not possible here so I’ve learned to cope. I share this because Kendra asked a question about kitchen cleaning and it reminded me of my slacker ways. You should try it sometime. Seriously. It cuts down cleaning time and who doesn’t want that?

I want that.

I want everything to take less time. I’m kind of obsessed as of late. It’s probably disordered behavior but I can’t stop thinking about streamlining. If only everything were simpler, I think to myself, life would be perfect. It’s unreasonable. You can only simplify so much and while it does make life easier, it’s not a magic bullet. I know this, but it doesn’t help me be any less enthralled with the idea.

If it weren’t this, it’d be something else. I should be grateful that my obsessions tend to be positive. I may be spending the week’s grocery budget on organizational supplies, but it’s not meth, dammit.

Speaking of positive enthrallments, the first monthly meeting of the Cultivated Writers — you remember, that e-writer’s group I started — met last week and it was fantastic. We had a small but dynamic group and Britt delivered above and beyond any expectations I could have had for our first guest of the year. I’m in the process of planning the second meeting now. It’s scheduled for February 14 at 9 p.m. EST. We meet on skype but no video or audio is required — it’s a straight forward text chat room. You should join us. Yes you.

And, I guess, that’ll do it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow. Hopefully with something more substantial to say. I promise.

Tagged as: Random