"For Now" is Now

Are you anything like me when it comes to dealing with stuff? You set it or throw it somewhere "for now" and then realize, four months later, that "now" is an entity that has to be created--by you?

"Now" is now, today, in my house.

I started by having Ben move the sofa away from the wall so I could vacuum behind it. Oh, the dog hair that has amassed along the baseboard.

Vacuuming behind it led to "Faboloso-ing" the baseboards, which led to

dusting all the furniture, including the top off my Victorian organ which Paul had to lift off for me.

Next thing I knew I was wiping off Grandpa's old hymnals which reminded me of when he pastored an AME church in Kansas. and I thanked God for my Christian heritage.

Since I was at the piano, I decided to play the sheet music posed there--"Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." Well, it seemed a fount of grease had come to live on all 88 keys. So I degreased them and removed some stuck-on Scotch tape, put there by some 7-year-old (who may have been six or five when he did it, judging from how hard it was to remove). Once the ivories were as clean as the ebonies, I decided I liked less of everything, so...

I took some unwanted decorations to a give-away box in the garage, and while I was in the garage it occurred to me it would make a better place to house the bathroom mirror that had been set next to the piano "for now" (back in June!), so I hauled it from its old "by the piano" home to "by the spare freezer" home.

Once the mirror and decorative clutter were gone, I realized I didn't need to run a morgue for dead flies in my windowsills anymore. Dyson sucked them to their final resting place--well, not FINAL--I will see to it that the county landfill becomes their cemetery.

It was at the moment I was 92% finished with my living room that I konked out. I only meant to sit a spell and admire the clean, glowing space, but before long I was curled up in an oversized chair, asleep. Hope I didn't drool on my freshly vacuumed upholstery.

The only things that remain are books and magazines that need to be sorted. Not my favorite pastime, but doubtless some are begging to be taken back to the county library for a reunion with their less-dusty friends.

A brochure came in the mail last week that reads, "THE WRONG PEOPLE ARE CLEANING YOUR HOUSE!" and I thought, "No, that's not the problem. The problem is NO PEOPLE are cleaning my house."

Until today. And while I cleaned the living room, Paul fixed the garbage disposal and washed laundry .Joel swept the deck and cleaned baseboards in the foyer and Windexed windows. Sarah is deep cleaning her room, Ben is cutting the grass, and Stephen ran to Home Depot for his dad, cleaned up dishes and polished his brass cymbals.

A lot of work, yes, but rewarding, and the list (courtesy of the master of the manor) still contains a few items that have yet to be crossed off. I have to go through a bunch of papers, the kind that get tossed into a bag when people are coming over, and set in the shoe closet "for now."