Welcome Home!

Out with the old and in with the new. Last week, at least two friends shared that they were cleaning up their homes. One said it with such urgency I thought perhaps he’d had a flooded basement or a small fire.

“I’m trying to clean up this huge mess around here,” he said, with a loud sigh.

“What happened?” I asked, alarmed, as I couldn’t tell from the other end of the phone line.

“Oh, it’s just, you know, New Year’s,” he explained.

Wow, I thought, as this is a person who’s so organized the magazine Real Simple could do an entire edition on his house. And he wouldn’t even have to clean up before they got there.

Another pal mentioned something about “… a lot of stuff now sitting in the garage. My wife always does that, you know, around New Year’s.”

Remember when garages were mostly for cars?

I’d like to take this opportunity to make an announcement: I am no Martha Stewart and my house will never be ready for Real Simple to come over and spend the night.

As a kid I was messy, just ask my dad: He once found my bedroom full of horse tack, including two saddles and a blanket, which I was cleaning and polishing.

“This stinks!” he yelled, standing in the door.

“It’s too cold to do this in the barn,” I said, matter-of-factly. “It’s winter.”

There was no arguing with the pony girl.

As an adult I have learned that there are certain health risks associated with leaving piles of used cereal bowls under your bed, so I don’t do that anymore.

But I sleep fine if there’s a plate or two sitting in my sink.

Or if the last load of laundry is waiting for me on the kitchen floor for tomorrow morning.

My biggest organizational problem is a tendency to pile.

And I know what they say:

Once something – letters, magazines, pizza boxes, newspapers, wet leaves – ends up in a pile, it never comes out alive again.

So who am I kidding? I may as well throw the whole load out as soon as it begins to pile up. I’ll be doing some of that the next couple of weeks.

But I refuse to succumb completely to January cleaning fever, sticking to my tried-and-true housekeeping philosophy: I’d rather live with a little dirt in the corners, than in a clean hell.