ARE YOU A CLEANER? OR A NOT-CLEANER?

Last year, I tackled the enormous task of cleaning out the boys' room upstairs. It was time. My "boys" are all grown men now, and they all have places of their own.

Several times in the process of sorting and cleaning out, I gave up. I walked out of the room, closed the door behind me, and vowed, "I'm not going back in there. Ever." But then I'd get over my cleaning slump, put the hazmat suit back on, and head back in.

Cleaning wasn't entirely without sweet moments of nostalgia and unexpected flashes of humor. If I encountered something I didn't know what to do with, I'd take a picture and message the boys. "What is this? Keep, give to somebody (who?), or throw away?" For example, I found several heavy steel rods in one of the closets.

Me: "What are these?"
One of my sons: "Rods from a foosball table."
Me: "Why do you have foosball rods?" (We have never owned a foosball table.)
Son: "Because you never know when you might want to make something really cool out of foosball table rods."
Me: "?"
Son: "Ditch them."

Finally, after several months of blood, sweat, and tears, the room was clean. I messaged the young men, "You're welcome." When I die and they don't have to miss a month of work to clean out all that mess after the funeral, they can thank me then.

I am happy to say that now, when friends stop by on short notice and need a place to camp for the night, we have a lovely room waiting for them. In fact, my daughter and I like the room so much, now that it's clean and tidy, that it's become a favorite place to write and study.

But cleaning out the boys' room...that was last year.

This year, I'd like to conquer the closet under the stairs (currently almost a bio-hazard), the laundry room (not too bad, just needs tidying), and the downstairs front bedroom (which is not really a bedroom at all, but an in-house, climate-controlled storage unit for dead computers, busted pottery, outdated textbooks, and other mysterious treasures).

Why am I writing all of this?

I have learned there are two kinds of people in the world. Actually, there are infinite kinds of people, but today, I have two particular kinds in mind: people who clean, and people who don't. People who say, "No one's even thought about those fooseball rods in years. Why bother messing with them now?" - and - people who say, "If no one is going to use these things, why are they still taking up space in the closet after all these years? If we clean out all this junk, someone can actually hang clothes in here."

I am a person who cleans. I don't particularly like cleaning, but I do it anyway, because excessive clutter makes me feel claustrophobic and because STUFF, for some reason, drains me emotionally. Seriously. All that STUFF up there in the attic? I can't see it, but I know it's up there, and it feels like a tremendous weight suspended above my head.

Here are a few things I've learned about being a cleaner:

My being a cleaner sometimes makes the non-cleaners around me anxious. Just as STUFF makes me feel claustrophobic, STUFF makes some people feel safe. Getting rid of stuff causes them general uneasiness. I need to remember this and to be sensitive to the proclivities of the people around me.

After the cleaning is finished, everyone actually appreciates the resultant order, even the non-cleaners. I need to remember this, too, when the comments and angst of non-cleaners make me feel like giving up. Be sensitive, but persevere.

Routine housework = less work when you minimize clutter. Mopping the floors, for example: soooo much easier and faster when I don't have to shift a bazillion piles of stuff out of the way to get to the floor in the first place.

Not only is a de-cluttered house easier to clean: it often stays cleaner, too. I finished cleaning the boys' room last fall and, amazingly, it has stayed tidy. Not because no one is using it - we are using it, every day. I think it's because we enjoy having a nice place to write and do homework and to share with friends, and we kinda want to keep it that way.

Now, I need to get back to work on the closet under the stairs. I'm super pumped, though - I found a piece of the closet floor this morning! Let's do this!