Monday, August 21, 2006

Cleaning House 

If you haven't heard from me for a few days, it's because I've been cleaning the dumping spaces. Yesterday it was the garage, where the walls have crept in on our carfootage until we could not pass with doors open. This morning I start on the basement, where a green mold patina blossoms on every leather surface, and a hundred empty boxes remind us that we never really finished moving in.

If all goes well, I might have time to clear the brushpiles from along the driveway tomorrow afternoon between a much-needed haircut and supper with Dad. Such possibility grows distant, however, as time goes on, and the mold begins to affect my sinuses.

Everyone understands the idea of Spring cleaning; airing out the nooks and crannies after a winter cooped up in the house is intuitive. But we're messy people, Darcie and I, and the kids seem to have inherited our trait. We've spent a year tidying, mostly for company, mostly in a rush, and it's these semi-private dumping grounds -- the basement, the garage, even the wood's edges -- which have sufered from our eternal struggle to keep the place cosmetic.

Too, what with the school year starting up again next Monday, time is running out for such projects. Soon my days will be filled with children, and my evenings full of family. Soon, full days will be too precious, and the air too cold, to do other than hunker down, and be close to my kids after long weeks of work and early rising, and fill the house with winter's nest.

Thus, Fall cleaning. Unrealistic as it is, I remain ever hopeful that the spaces I sweep and unclutter today will remain so. More probably, we've made enough room for another year's accumulation. Until the Fall comes twice, then: may these places become rooms, that we might fill them with our love.

posted by boyhowdy | 11:22 AM |

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