8 APR 09: Get Out of My House

A new TV crime drama premieres tonight called "The Unusuals." The timing is amazing, because this post is about several unusual events of the last few weeks. The biggest one is that spring cleaning is over, a record two days ahead of schedule. Then again, maybe I shouldn't admit that -- because now you'll expect well thought-out jokes.

As you may have noticed from recent posts, we undergo what we call "Serious Spring Cleaning" every year. Yes, we mean Serious. Ordinary cleaning wipes the loose hairs away from the shower drain. Serious cleaning puts that plunger in the sink, to scrape the lime stains off.

Serious Spring Cleaning actually has a religious basis to it. The Biblical feast of "Unleavened Bread" begins at sunset tonight, and believers are supposed to get all the leavening out of their homes. I've heard ministers over the years warn leavening could be almost anywhere. And for a single guy who enjoys chocolate chip cookies, I know how accurate that is.

It's sometimes been a final-day strain to get all the leavening out of the house by deadline time. Well-meaning friends and neighbors sometimes put hurdles in the way. Take the year in metro Atlanta when deadline day was a Friday -- and a former roommate insisted I use that day to call Clark Howard over and over again, to ask travel questions he didn't feel comfortable asking.

But this year - well, it's been unusual. I gained time on the cleaning clock early, and was able to coast to the finish line late Monday. Well, that's the unofficial finish line. Columbus city rules barred me from putting my last two trash bags at the curb until 7:00 a.m. Tuesday - so they sat on the front porch all night.

I have a system when it comes to Serious Spring Cleaning - going one room at a time, from the one least likely to have leaven to the one most likely. So we started in the bathroom, where bread crumbs normally are spit out with baking soda-free toothpaste.

But there are other benefits to Serious Spring Cleaning, and they begin in the bathroom. The biggest goal is the removal of roaches and their remnants. You know what I mean by remnants, right? Those black specks that make newcomers think you sneezed pepper all over your medicine cabinet.

While roaches might be hidden, cobwebs are in plain sight at the intersection of walls and ceilings. Despite a claim years ago on the radio by Dr. Science, I removed practically all of them this year without any pieces of furniture collapsing.

(This reminds me of one major difference between my springtime tradition and what many Christians do. They look for Easter bunnies - I go after dust bunnies.)

It's also a perfect time of year to organize all the clutter that develops in the course of a year. Some of it admittedly piled up on the chest of drawers in my bedroom, and is now in a proper place. Maybe one of these days, I'll actually read those changes in credit card terms....

Serious Spring Cleaning really gets down to business when we reach the computer room. Do you realize how many hours we spend there each year, simply preparing this blog? Not to mention how many games of Minesweeper we've lost, because we were stuck for a good punchline?

The TV news offered a great new idea this year for cleaning my computer keyboard. Take the sticky part of a "sticky note," and go between the gaps. The note part, of course, is left for writing something to someone you really detest.

The scariest moment of Serious Spring Cleaning came in the computer room. I vacuumed along a side - and heard a coin be swept off the carpet. That called for a final review of the vacuum bag late Monday. Feelings - ten cents' worth of feelings....

After all the paperwork and computer-related things are cleaned, it's on to the living room. There was a big change there this year, as a dual cassette deck which doesn't play properly anymore was moved into a storage box. It's still separated from one of my rarest keepsakes - a machine which records eight-track tapes.

Yet even in the most challenging rooms, we were able to move quickly this year. I'd like to think it's because I'm getting better at keeping things clean and organized year-round. But I know myself better than that - and note how much rain during March kept me indoors.

So thanks to a strong focus and bad weather, we had almost two weeks to clean the kitchen. There was plenty of time to organize a room which often can be a rush job. For instance, I was amazed to learn clear plastic drinking cups come in 11 different sizes.

The roaches especially love to congregate around my kitchen trash can, and in gaps around the stove. This year I had time to take an aggressive approach, and use insect spray on those spots. The pilot light of the stove did NOT produce any explosions - so maybe the spray is weaker than I thought.

The final official bit of leavened bread to leave the house was a box of six glazed Publix doughnuts. Well, it sort of "left the house" Monday evening - but I'm still in the house as I write this, complete with my stomach.

So the trash cans have been cleaned, the vacuum cleaner is temporarily without a bag, and the toaster is hidden in a closet for the next eight days or do. The unusual tradition of Serious Spring Cleaning has been accomplished. Now if the trees will kindly cooperate, and knock it off with all the pollen....

E-MAIL UPDATE: A conclusion we reached Tuesday quickly brought a challenge....

"Mayor Wetherington left open the possibility that the city will help pay for water damage to homes on Teak Drive. That's a topic for next week's Columbus Council meeting. There's no meeting today, apparently due to the Muscogee County school spring break -- unless they finally discovered they missed Caesar Chavez Day."

Richard -- remember that the Council schedule has changed, and there is a meeting tonight that will be devoted to the issuance of proclamations by the Mayor and Council. The City Government doesn't take a Spring Break as do the schools.

But if there was a Tuesday evening meeting, there should have been an agenda posted -- and none was posted at the city web site, not even Tuesday afternoon. Then again, maybe the city issued proclamations honoring undercover police officers.

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