Cleaning is Expensive

      I have had a weird illness lately. I want to clean everything. And just to be clear, the "illness" IS that I want to clean everything. I am not a disgusting person and I clean my house often, including doing several different cleaning jobs every single day. But in the course of regular life I can overlook or ignore certain things for months at a time. I think most of us are like this (there are definitely exceptions to this.) but then we (most of us) get to that point where "Spring cleaning" becomes really enticing. And then we super deep clean everything. Again, some people super deep clean everything all of the time, some people can live in filth and not care, but I think the majority of people fall in the middle. Often my "Spring cleaning" lands on the hottest, most humid day in the Summer. I have no idea why. It has been like that for a lot of years. My brother John and I used to get into the super deep cleaning when the weather was super gross. And we grew up with no AC (and I still do not have AC). Anyway, this year my Spring cleaning seems to actually be in the Spring. And funny enough, Massachusetts seems to be actually getting Spring this year. For many years now we have had cold, cold, cold, one nice week, then instant Summer! This year it is mild to really nice, and has been for a couple of weeks now. We have some chilly days in the mix, but overall just really nice weather. I like it. 

      Can you tell I am easily side tracked? I think you already knew that about me. That actually leads into what this post is mostly about. Being easily side tracked. I think it started last Thursday. I was at school, thinking about going through all of my doll making and crafting supplies. I had the idea that I could neaten up all of the mess I had made during my big push to get things finished for the live sale. I could empty the bags of things that were in places they didn't go and pull out things that I was not using. It sounded really nice. Then I got the idea that it would be fun to do a giveaway, which I have already talked about. So I did that, I went through all of (or a lot of) my doll making items, pulling out things I know I am not using or likely to use. I did my giveaway photos and then had to pack things for shipping. The large lot of stuff ended up double bagged (literally) in paper grocery bags. I secured everything with copious amounts of box tape. I meant to put all the stuff in a box but I either had ones that were too big or too small. So this happened. Anyway, the shipping for the 2 giveaways was about $35. Wow. 

      So that was Thursday. I did the doll stuff cleaning and sorting and got giveaways packed to ship out and then Friday and Saturday I managed not to do any doll work. I was proud of me. I don't actually remember what I did, so maybe it wasn't fun, but at least it was a bit of a break. Sunday though I decided I wanted to do just a couple of deep cleaning things. But I started with normal cleaning things. I vacuumed in my bedroom and then I noticed that the short runner in the hallway could really use some attention. So I took care of that. But then I noticed that there were dust bunnies in the hall (most of the floor is just tile without a rug) and so I grabbed the broom and took care of the hallway. But then I noticed that there was... I just kept on going. I kept seeing things that needed extra attention. All of a sudden I could not not see the dirt and dust. And I had to take care of it. Every time I cleaned one thing my attention would then be drawn to another thing. So much deep cleaning happened. I also realized that my vacuum really was not doing its job anymore. It kept leaving little piles of sand on the carpet, or just not picking things up at all. So I paused in my wild deep cleaning to go out and buy a new vacuum. I suspected for a bit that that was coming. I had already taken the old one apart to clean everything out, which did not help much or for long. So yeah, between shipping out things I was giving away and buying a new vacuum, cleaning was definitely expensive last weekend. 

     In different news, the second stablemate from the stablemate club arrived. I always buy them as soon as I get the email. I don't want to forget after all. I already can't remember this guy's name (Hendrix? Am I making that up?) and this one also has a small but obvious flaw on him. My first one (whose name I really can't remember right now) had the small but noticeable (and deep) ding in his flank on his show side. This one has some noticeable chunk of something in his gloss on his back. The good news is I am not an OF halter live shower (or usually OF anything shower) so I don't care. He has really excellent color and he looks spectacular standing on the shelf next to the glossy gray from the Breyerfest set. I don't even particularly like glossy horses, but this guy is really lovely in gloss. 

      I still seem to be infected with that cleaning illness. I keep seeing the dirt and dust everywhere. School is rough because there is SO MUCH dust everywhere, and I am definitely not going to clean the school. But I keep on seeing the things that I wish were cleaner. And I want to vacuum all the time. That is so unlike me. But I have to say, the purging and deep cleaning really does feel good. And it is feeling like Spring. I like it.