Going for Gold

The Olympics end today. What a run it's been! From the rainy opening with the torch carried across the rooftops of Paris to the final games and heats, there have been thrills for sports fan — and for couch potatoes, too. 

It's enough to make me tackle my chores with Olympic ardor. I already do my own form of race-walking, though with significantly less hip swivel. But yesterday I found myself vacuuming, cleaning and doing yard work with medals in mind. 

A bronze in dusting, a silver in weeding, and a gold in baking. It's not a 3:51-minute 1,500 ... but it's something.

The Paper Towel School

I'm of the paper-towel school of house cleaning. Though I also employ a vacuum, dust cloth and broom, the humble paper towel is one of my chief weapons against dirt and grime.

Is it the most sanitary? Absolutely, you just throw it away when you're done.

Is it the most environmentally sound? I'll plead the Fifth on that.

But when you need a smudge remover, counter cleaner, or spill picker-upper, it can't be beat. I'll be taking six rolls to the cabin tomorrow, and I'm not sure it's enough. 

(Beatrix Potter's Mrs. Tittlemouse, who would never use paper towels.)

Rose Time

The climbing rose peaked a few days ago, but the plant is still weighed heavy by blossoms, and when I sit on the deck to write the air is filled with fragrance. 

When I look out at the yard through its flowers, it's a little like looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses.

But at some point, I must squeegee off the glass-topped table and abandon for a minute my journal or laptop to sweep up petals with the old broom I leave outside. 

What better way to enjoy the rose than by immersing myself in its detritus, still soft and pearly pink?

The Appointment

I made the appointment, and I'm keeping it. Not the dental appointment, though I made that one, too. This one is with the Reston Used Book Shop, where I'll take a box of books tomorrow. If I can lift it, that is. 

I've written before of purging and rearranging, of my meager attempts to bring order from chaos. This current book removal project began as part of an ongoing basement decluttering effort, and has spread upstairs to a slew of double-booked shelves. 

The question now: Do I start filling another box to give away? Not so fast. I don't want to overdo it. So I  haul the carton to the car for tomorrow's date with destiny. That's enough for now. I think I'll celebrate ...  by ordering a new book. 

(The future home of many of my books, I hope.) 

Out with the Old

Like many folks during these waning days of 2023, I've spent a few hours getting rid of stuff I've accumulated this year and many other years (emphasis on the latter). In particular, I zeroed in on an area of the basement where I've stored — dumped might be a better word — the girls' dolls and toys. The girls who are grown up and raising children of their own. 

Obviously, this is a task I've postponed for years. And no wonder. It's a bittersweet duty indeed. Here were favorite toys I'd long since forgotten — stuffed rabbits, a dancing mouse, an acrobatic lamb on a stick, a jack-in-the-box. Here too were boxes of school work, mostly middle school and high school, so not that precious early stuff, but still a potential minefield. 

I'll admit the tears flowed as I sorted through these treasures. They were good tears, necessary tears. I was mourning a time of my life that is no more. Like any other loss, it's better to acknowledge it, to kiss it and let it go. As I write these words, I can hear the garbage truck stopping in front of the house. Now all of those relics ... are truly gone. 

(An old photo of a messy garage that I trot out when I need evidence of Too Much Stuff.)

Badge of Courage

Long before Shout, my go-to stain removal substance, and the little Tide pen I now carry with me on trips, there were stain removal charts. Mine is tacked up in the laundry room and is still my best source for wild and wacky — but often effective — stain removal tips.

From it I learned that the remedy for ballpoint ink stains is glycerine. I once had an old bottle of the stuff that worked wonders, saved a yellow linen shirt that I paid way too much for and was almost ruined by an inky gash across the front.

I used that old bottle until I couldn't anymore, but I regret to say that the new stock I ordered — proudly described as vegetable glycerine — isn't nearly as effective. I scrubbed and scrubbed and managed to mute the stains slightly, but the ink stain isn't gone ... and probably will never be.

I tell myself it doesn't matter. Ink stains are a badge of courage, not a blot of shame.

(A lovely painting — by Edmund Blair Leighton — but an ink stain ready to happen?)

TMT

While I've never been a clean freak, I do keep a relatively neat house. Just don't open any closets or drawers, and avoid the basement at all costs. 

But even I can experience what I've come to think of as TMT — Too Much Tidiness. 

With four friends over for dinner last weekend, the house had come perilously close to this condition. Waking up to a blank coffee table for the second morning in a row, I knew what I had to do. I marched down to the basement and brought up two armloads of magazines. 

Here are two years worth of National Geographics, a year and a half of Atlantics and various other publications, plus a couple of books for good measure. 

Ah yes, that's better. 

Emotional Minefields

Last week I went through files in the basement, an ongoing task. I ripped and shredded and came up with two bags worth of trash. It barely made a dent.

A weirder (to me) but also necessary form of clean-up is digital detoxing. In the course of updating my computer's operating system (one of those pesky to-dos I haven't tackled in a while), I realized that I may not have enough memory to install the new system.

So I've been prodding and poking in the digital bowels of my machine, finding all sorts of hiding places where large files lurk. Many of them are videos sent with text messages. Clicking on those videos yields blasts from the past, old work snippets, footage of dogs (not mine) romping in fields. Those are easy ones to delete. But the other day I found a video with a much-younger Copper dashing around the backyard, giving his much-larger dog cousins a merry chase. 

To see him again in his younger skin brought a tear to my eye. There was our own dear, frisky pup, bobbing and feinting and generally being his own irascible self. I used to think only hard-copy cleanup was an emotional minefield. Now I know otherwise. 

Making Do

This morning while doing what passes for a quick clean of my kitchen with paper towels and disinfectant spray I was thinking about the house maids in "Downton Abbey," which I've been rewatching recently.

When I view the excess that attends the lives of the Earl of Grantham and his family I feel disgust laced with envy. How dare they consume all those resources for just one family (a family of two parents and three daughters, exactly the size of my own)? 

But then, quick on its heels, this rueful observation: Wouldn't it be nice if I had a cook, a gardener, a chauffeur and a scullery maid?

My house is seldom spic-and-span. It's tidy, but not scrupulously clean. Long ago I realized that in order to raise children, write and bring in some income, standards would have to slip. And slip they did.

Now I have more time but I've learned to live with stains on the carpet and smudges on the walls. Truth to tell, if a crew from Downton Abbey were suddenly to offer its services, I might have to think a minute before I said yes. 

The Old World

I want to stay with the filing topic today, because when I file, I read, and when I read, I remember. 

The folders I'm going through are full of the notes and research I collected for the articles I wrote when I was a full-time freelancer. I toss most of the research and notes, but I keep the assignment letters, list of sources, and the piece itself. The "wheat" is small and the chaff is plentiful. 

What emerges from this winnowing is not only a set of skinny file folders, but also the portrait of an age. It was a golden era for magazine writers: publications were plump, editors were many, business was brisk.

It's a different world now, a leaner, meaner one. And while I try not to let it bother me, I miss that old world. 

Mr. Basement

The coffee table in the living room was cleared of its usual clutter in time for Easter guests and somehow still remains a blank slate. Carpets are vacuumed, and new floors gleam in the "dining room." 

In other words, the first floor of the house is looking spiffier than usual. 

But for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And here, as soon as one floor of the house looks better, another looks worse. 

It's a bit like Dorian Gray's portrait in the attic, where the image of the man ages but the man himself does not. Or it could be two faces of the same person, a la Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: one industrious and law-abiding; the other ... a monster. 

In my house, it's Dr. First Floor and Mr. Basement. 

The Workhorse

I've never been one for smart appliances. I'd rather not talk to my toaster or send messages to my thermostat. But sometimes, I think I might be reading their minds.

A few weeks ago, while sorting  laundry, I was suddenly struck by the age and dedication of our decades-old washing machine. How many thousands of loads has it swished and swirled and spun dry? How many times have I spun that dial, always clockwise, of course.  How many more loads did it have left?

I must have been sensing metal fatigue, because a few weeks later. the workhorse died. It wasn't an overload or turning the dial counter-clockwise (the only two ways I was told you could break it), it was the great machine's heart that gave out—its motor died. 

After a few days of thinking we might fix it, we realized we had to buy a new machine ... and so we did. It's a fairly simple model, as modern machines go, but it's bigger and shinier and plays little songs when it starts and finishes. It is, in short, a show pony. Let's just hope it grows into a workhorse. 

The Good Fight

So far, April is proving to be as wet as March was windy. The months are playing their usual roles, in other words. 

I feel a certain responsibility on rainy days: unless otherwise occupied, I should use them for cleaning closets or going through old files in the basement. 

Which means that after I've written, and after I've studied, and after I've made today's calls and sent today's emails, I must get myself to the nether regions of the house ... and fight the good fight.

Culling

Next to writing, walking and reading, decluttering has been high on my list of things to do since April 30. 

Let's just say I didn't exactly rush to begin what I'm sure will be a years-long and often excruciating exercise. 

Should I save all the Amazon Advantage order slips from when I was still packing off copies of my book to the behemoth every few weeks? That's an easy one. Into the recycling bin with them.

I have also been known to save more than my share of articles ripped from daily newspapers. These range from obituaries of noteworthy individuals to reviews of interesting books, even if they were published in 2006. 

Far harder are the article folders. I kept one for every story I wrote as a freelancer. To banish every set of interview notes would be too much, so I'm tip-toeing into closure by culling the folders to the barest minimum. 

Probably the whole folder needs to go, but for now, I'm excited that this decluttering exercise emptied out more than half of a file drawer. 

Baby steps ...

Basement-Bound?

On a rainy morning, my thoughts naturally turn to cleaning and tidying. Not that I'm actually doing any of that today, but I am thinking about how comforting it would be to purge a file cabinet drawer, to empty a closet, to fill a bag with old clothes stored in the basement and drive them to Goodwill.

I missed the Marie Kondo craze with its sparking of joy. Now I must go it alone, with only my own inclinations to guide me. And my own inclinations are to keep that letter, that sweater, and of course, that book.

But on rainy days, there's at least some hope of change, some inward focus that says ... get thee to the basement to sort and toss.

Tossing the 'Bible'

When I think of National Geographic magazine, I think of mountains and mummies and majesty. I think of the Bible, since I've always approached the magazine with reverence, thanks to its plethora of fine photographs and its perfect binding. I also think of George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life." Early in the film, when he's a kid, he boasts that he's been selected for membership in the National Geographic Society. 

Well, I was, too. And I can tell you what it's like decades later, when you don't throw out any of those precious journals, when you don't even let your kids cut them up when they begged you to let them. Instead, you held onto the magazines, thinking they were too beautiful to toss, that somebody would want a complete set someday. A library, a nursing home, someplace.

But in a world where you can't even give away a piano, you certainly can't interest anyone in boxes of National Geographic magazines. In fact, you can't even throw them all away at once; they're too heavy. So we're getting rid of them box by box. It's like slowly peeling off a bandage — a painful process. But in the end, we'll be a little bit freer, a little bit lighter, and these days, that's what it's all about.  

Musical Chores

I'm always listening to music while walking with my iPod, but until recently I'd lost the ability to blare symphonies or musicals or folk tunes at home. But now, a jerry-rigged system is once again filling the house with sound. 

On Saturday morning, while putting away the groceries, it was Simon and Garfunkel's "Old Friends." "Bye-bye Love"  is a surprisingly apt tune for wiping down packages of peppers and strawberries and finding a place for them in the fridge. The "bye-bye" part is good for jettisoning leftovers.

Later in the day, I listened to Benny Goodman while chopping vegetables for potato-leek soup. "Sing, sing, sing" mimicked "Chop, chop, chop," the driving bass beat perfect for making quick work with the potato peeler. Dad must have been behind the scenes for this pick, loving both food and Big Band.

And finally, while making pot roast in the crockpot, I matched the cool, foggy weather outside with the Hernon Brothers' "Across the Sound," an album picked up two summers ago on the isle of  Inishmore. 

Chores fly when they have a musical accompaniment. 

Going Nowhere

I've considered and forgotten several post ideas as this rainy day makes me sleepy. So far I've spent way too much time reading the newspaper. I've looked up recipes, made vague notes about what ingredients I would need to make them, then decided salad for dinner again isn't such a bad idea.

I've answered emails, tidied the kitchen, refreshed the cut flowers, written in my journal, eaten yogurt and strawberries, and brought my crocheting downstairs — though I've yet to touch the hook.

I tell myself that when one is normally a tightly scheduled person, it's healthy to do nothing for a few hours  — but of course, I don't believe it.

Outside, the world is green and dripping. I was out in it early, committing to the walk before I knew it was drizzling and not wanting to miss the birds calling to each other at daybreak. My shoes won't dry for hours.  But that's just fine — I'm not going anywhere.

(A rare photo of the house without cars in the driveway.) 

Blank Slate

I've started off the new year with almost as much clutter as before — with one notable exception: I cleared off one counter in the kitchen. I banished the bread box, moved the canisters and corralled the papers. Which means I begin 2020 with one clean sweep of vintage Formica.

I'm not sure why I did this, but there must be a deep-seated need to begin the year with a blank slate, to clear the way for 12 more months of experiences ... and stuff.

Nature abhors a vacuum, of course, especially in this house, and things are constantly piling up on the counter: newspapers, mail, glasses, crumbs. But so far nothing I can't dispatch quickly to its intended spot or to the recycling bin.

This won't last long, I know. The house in general is full to bursting. There's a warren of boxes in the basement, and a vanity and bathtub in the garage ... but here in my kitchen, at this very moment, there is a lovely open countertop. And I'm going to keep it that way as long as I can.

Saving Papers

It turns out that the torrential rains that plagued us the last couple of weeks seeped into our basement (usually dry) and had their way with a few boxes. Since these boxes contained paper (as oh so many of them do), this was not a welcome development.

Of course, it's never a welcome development when your basement is even partially flooded ... and let's just say that not everything in my house is tidily placed on shelves and ensconced in plastic tubs. Which means there were some waterlogged files. Nothing terribly vital, but material that I had saved, and at one point had some utility.

In the general vicinity were two large boxes of newspapers. Saving newspapers is something I come by honestly — Mom was a pro — and I'm no slouch myself. This was soon made abundantly clear. Some of the saved newspapers contained articles or op-eds I wrote. Fair enough. But do I need to save the entire newspaper? No! That was an easy one.

More difficult was deciding which of the historical newspapers to keep. I settled on 9/11, Clinton Elected, Clinton Impeached, Bush Elected and ... somewhere there's an Obama Elected one too but it must be in a different box.

And then there were newspapers for the day of each daughter's birth. I'd forgotten I did this. These papers will, I hope, mean something to each of them someday. But what they mean to me now — especially since two of the girls were born on Sunday — is that I have just that much more heavy newsprint in of my house.