Cleaning: a ramble

It's amazing how cleaning off the top of your desk can make you feel like a new person. When I got to work this morning, instead of turning on my computer and getting into it, I decided to organize the top of my desk.

I work for a journal and have about 50 issues on my desk at any one time. Pretty much because I don't know what to do with them. Once my advance copy comes in I thumb through it, make any notes, then toss it in the center of my desk. So today I made 2 piles of them. Ahhh, a start. Then I gathered up all the lose notes from meetings back in December and threw them out.

I'm on a new pattern that if I don't need it I'm throwing it out. This came about by my new cleaning lady. Yes, I did it again and hired a new person. And so far so good. But I came home and there were 2 giant black garbage bags. Filled. With I don't know what. So, at first I was concerned that there was stuff in there that I needed. Important stuff. I held back though and waited. I didn't want to open the bags and end up dumping it all back on my kitchen table, undoing all the wonderful cleaning she did. 

But then I couldn't find a container we use to clean the sink drains. About once a week we put this bio-cleaner stuff down the drain to eat away at the gunk that has developed after 50 years. We have to do this since plumbers came to jack hammer up the kitchen and dining room floor to repair an old pipe that had dissolved. That's another story. So, I tentatively opened one of the black bags...and there is was, right on top. I grabbed it, and shut the bag without looking at anything else. Well, I did spy 4 cans of easy off cleaner. (So THATS why my stove looks awesome.) However, trash day has come and gone and the bags weren't put out. So I have another week of not looking in the bags. And I'm not missing anything else. That I know of right now. Next Wednesday, the day after the trash is picked up, I'll probably remember something I can't find.

But back to my office.

I swept clean my desk, then decided to clean out my work bag. I use a canvas tote that I got at the Black Dog on Martha's Vineyard last summer. It's a great bag. And it was cluttered. I found 9 pens, 3 pencils, $2.12 in change, my prescription for contacts, my gym membership form that I need to send into my health insurance to get a reimbursement, two pairs of gloves, arm warmers, tin of Altoids, Chapstick, 3 lipsticks, hand warmers, a bottle of Gatorade, and 4 hair ties, a book, and 2 race medals. And a bunch of trash and dirt.

No wonder it felt heavy.