"Why Can't People See How We Live...Are We So Vain?!?"

When I was a kid, and I had to help clean up the house because company was coming over, my thoughts were generally best expressed by the quote above. I mean, if the people coming over were really our friends, would they be so superficial as to judge us based upon how clean our house is? Aren't we really just the unwitting pawns in the epic corporate battle between Clorox and Borax? Can't we break these chains of bondage and live truly free, if somewhat messy? My arguements fell upon the deaf ears of my father, who, obviously, is totally under the thumb of Mr. Clean.

I bring up my distain for tidying up the house because the parents are coming to visit on tomorrow. That means spring cleaning, or, more accurately, take all the mess that's been laying around the house over the winter and make a mess of it somewhere much more discreet. I suppose it's not that big a deal, the weather's kind of crappy today.

We've noticed an odd phenomenon in our house. Every time we get a new cabinet or put up new shelves or even just put a large garbage can at the end of our dining room table and, with one big arm sweep, clear the several weeks worth of junk mail, soda cans, and who knows what else into it, the newly opened available space is quickly taken up again by new junk (read it again, it's a legitimate, grammatically correct sentence). Sisyphus, I feel your pain! It's like there's gremlins that will bring things out of the woodwork to scatter across our house at the first sign of any progress in cleaning (I like to blame things on gremlins. They make messes, give me bad advice, never throw away the garbage I leave lying around, and only I can see them).

My hot wife and I have discussed many times how we've too much junk and need to be more cavalier about tossing useless items in the dustbin or giving them away to someone who will actually use them, and it's a fantastic theory. Inevitably, however, after we toss out the single mitten that hasn't seen it's mate in years, those damn gremlins plant it in a dresser drawer or between the couch cushions the next day. It's maddening, and I've just come up with a new legitimatization from being such a packrat...it's not that I'm not willing to part with so much useless junk, it's just that I'm not going to give those gremlins the satisfaction. I knew I shouldn't have let them eat after midnight...