Stephanie Croston

    There's something about cleaning.
     I don't know what it is, but every once in awhile I'm seized with the desire to clean my apartment.
     I don't really mind cleaning. It forces you to evaluate all the stuff you have in your life, paring down to the essentials. Questions like "Do I really need this?" and "Why in the world do I still have this?" take on greater significance when you're in the cleaning mode.
     Sometimes you find things you'd forgotten you had. Discovering a photo a friend sent or a letter you'd set aside to read later and then covered with other papers makes the hard work worthwhile.
     I used to clean a house during weekends when I was in college. It was a great way to earn a little spending money and a wonderful opportunity to get off campus. I didn't mind cleaning the bathrooms (they had three), dusting or even washing windows. They usually had some kind of music playing, and sometimes I'd be able to sing along with the artist.
     That's an important step in any kind of cleaning-choosing the appropriate music. You can't have anything too peaceful and serene, or you'll never get anything done. You need something with an energetic pace, and if it has words that you can sing along with, so much the better.
     When I decide it's time to clean, I take one room at a time. I usually start in the living room, since that's where the most piles are, and go from there.
     First to be excavated is the desk. I go through junk mail, bills and stacks of newspapers, making more piles. One is to be moved to the office/guest room where I can go through it more fully at a later date. Another goes straight into the trash.
     Once the new piles are moved to their respective destinations, I get the vacuum cleaner. Hooray for the vacuum. I like hearing the little rocks as they rattle through the hose. It makes me feel like I'm actually accomplishing something.
     When the living room is done, I move on to the bathroom. Scrubbing the bathtub is an adventure because I really have to work hard to remove the water stains. They get down into the spaces between the texture on the floor and walls and require more than a little elbow grease to remove.
     Getting rid of toothpaste spatter is comparatively easy, as is removing the make-up dust on the sink and mirror.
     Once that room is done, I take a break. Sometimes I get back up and finish with my bedroom and the kitchen, leaving the office/guest room for another day. It's a room I don't use as much as I should, so it doesn't get too dirty.
     My least favorite part about cleaning is doing the dishes. I love having a dishwasher because that saves having to soak and scrape pans. I just let the machine do its thing.
     I've never been overly fond of doing dishes. In fact, when I was younger and Mom had us kids take turns with the dishes, I'd pretend that I was Cinderella or another poor child who had to work for her living. I'd imagine that I was being forced to do this work against my will (which didn't require any imagination at all) and that one day, someone would find that I was really a princess and would rescue me from this drudgery.
     Then I'd get to the pans and Mom would take over, freeing me from the torture that was doing dishes. That was one of the good things about having a broken arm in fifth grade. Sorry, Mom, can't get my cast wet. I'm sure she made me dry, though.
     But there's nothing like sitting down after a couple hours with your hands covered with cleaning solution and knowing that your home is clean. Everything is where it's supposed to be. There are no dangerously teetering stacks of mail on the desk, no toothpaste drops on the sink, no hard water stains in the tub.
     And then you brush your teeth.