signs you need to clean . . .

there is a dust bunny hiding behind the hall table the size of Pippin.

the living room rug is hanging out to dry on the stair balustrade.  Since it is sisal, I can hose down any cat yaks.  Gah!

I can pounce onto the living room sofa in a cloud of dust and a mighty hi ho silver.

my bedroom has piles of clean laundry waiting to be ironed.

I will not mention the bathrooms.

And no, I am not proud of the condition of my home.  It just gets away from me.  It isn't high on my priorities.  In general, it doesn't bother me living this way . . .  until someone drops in unexpectedly, and then, yes, I am embarrassed.  Mortified in fact.  And then I clean.  After the fact.  In shame. 

Today I will make an effort and when I am done. It will sparkle just a bit under its layers of dust.  And I will be happy.  Just not happy enough to keep it up on a daily/weekly basis, lets get that perfectly clear.

And so it will continue.  But, a couple of days ago, a small older compact woman arrived on my doorstep offering her cleaning services and so we chatted.  I need to check out her references . . . a few of our neighbors.  And maybe that will be the answer . . .  but only if I am not too embarrassed to have her look at the house and then find her racing for the door, screaming and running zig-zags in terror down the cul-de-sac  . . .

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The downstairs is now clean and as I dusted and choked, and vacuumed and wheezed and wiped and sneezed, I realized how many goodies in my house have meaning for me:

Our hall table has an old wash pitcher my college friend's mother gave me when I admired a set she had.  She apologizing that she did not have the matching bowl . . . I, ecstatic to have just the ewer.

The sea oats I illegally seized my first year down here and carefully shellacked to preserve.  Not withstanding the fact that the three of us could have been thrown, slightly inebriated into the pokey for a little midnight poaching.

The two black elephants  I can remember as far back as my memory goes.  They used to sit on my sister's trinket shelve but I think they were much older.

The old manual typewriter really belongs to Katie.  She found it in an old 'antique' store and since it never made it back to her apartment, I appropriated it . . . for the time being.

The hurricane lamp my mother bought in Williamsburg, Virginia, on one of our last vacations and it sat for years on a table in our family living room, next to the family bible. 

The mirror behind the table was a goodie I found in college in an abandoned house up in the hills.  Long ago looted and trashed, the mirror had originally been attached to a bureau, the type that tips slightly forward and back.  It too was trashed but with a little tender loving care and refurbishment, its been with me ever since.

In the dining room, the furniture belonged to my parents.  When I reupholstered the chair seats, I found layer and layer of fabric whose memory I had long past lost.  Each layer was a gem unto itself bringing back those stale remembrances like little time capsules.

My mother-in-law tatted the doily underneath the floral arrangement for me.  It was white but I tea dyed it.  I love it.  In the background you can see a hooked rug my maternal grandmother made and if you look carefully, down in the corner, you can see she added her initials and the year.  I wouldn't trade it for anything.

See why I don't clean!  I get caught up in memories and nothing gets done.  I end up on the sofa, eyes closed going back in time and greeting those wonderful people in my life whose memories I keep in my heart and in my home albeit covered under a layer of dust.