I’m not a clean freak. Never have been and never will be, because there’s way too much to grab and enjoy in this life. But some little switch flipped itself in the past couple of weeks and all hell has broken loose. I can’t stop cleaning.

So far I’ve emptied, considered, purged or kept with a stronger hand that I ever thought possible. I’ve gone through everything that comes under the heading of “what happens when you inherit from both sides of the family, their spouses, their parents, their children, their children’s children, nieces, nephews, visitors, and a dog or two. Kidding about the dog, but we now have a GoodSized GoodWill pile, all of which I washed today. 

Sterling candle snuffer well over a foot long, statuette of a cherub riding a dolphin, miniscule ashtrays, a lovely blue cut-glass boat headed by a cherub and two oars she could never handle on her own, a globulous set of pewter cream and sugar servers that appear to be posing as five inch tomatoes (and still have decades, and I mean DECADES, of sugar inside them, a sterling bed warmer (honestly, how old could that be???), and 175ish sterling baby spoons marked with happy slogans from travels around the world. Yes, you read this correctly. It’s interesting learning the guts and bones of your families, isn’t it?

And then I cleaned out the no-man’s land under the sink and found all kinds of treasure, which I tossed anyway, mostly because it comes under the heading of Very Old. I did however, keep a dried up tub of Wrights Silver Polish, which I was able to re-hydrate, primarily because I used to date Mr. Wright, who was not at all dried up at the time.

In the happiness category, I came across an old dress which had once been floor-length with a looong ruffle at the bottom. I had (some decades ago) whacked it off a bit below the knee and placed pins for hemming and then tucked it away for another day, which was apparently this day. I’m not quite sure how I got that side zipper closed, but I did, and I proudly wore the dress for most of today, AND soon I’ll be raising it up to well-above-the-knee level and flaunting it. You gotta make cleaning fun, right?

And then I decided to tackle the 12 sheets of 2” thick PINK insulation foam that I had leftover and which has graced our living room for the past year. Sigh. I did well for the first 10 sheets, but then my ankle (also known as styrofoam-snapper) rebelled just as Vernon walked in the door to hear my scream. It’s not broken, but now it’s looking at me with that I’M DONE FOR TODAY kinda look. And yeah, maybe I am.