but the real motivation on my part lies in a different place. not self actualization or a yoga retreat or anything deep like that. I need to clean. not the type of cleaning to compensate for carmen's well meaning inadequacy, though I will haul out the windex to take the smudges and streaks off the family room windows. A deep seismic de-cluttering clean.
we all inhabit the same world, where the creep of stuff at times overwhelms. some people have the luxury of garages, attics or country houses to deal with this flow. others, like my friend dianne, are so vigilant about every piece of extraneous material that enters their life that even on a completely impromptu visit, their house appears ready for a magazine shoot. dianne, by the way, may seem extreme but she is in the high pantheon of friends who's own self described neuroses in no way impact their ability to be normal. and even she has traded up for more space.
my apartment is not like that. on a surprise visit, an old friend once exclaimed with the type of up tone at the end of the phrase that indicates hope or even desperation "are you moving?" At that moment, in fact, I was just reorganizing the living room. just last week i met with our minnesota based investment advisor in his annual visit to marvel at the robust performance of our heirloom portfolio overwhelmed with reasonably large positions of low cost basis third generation stocks that might be only slightly more useful than the paper they are printed on. he's never had occasion to meet us at home before, and upon entering, said "your apartment is great, so kid friendly." that would be code for "your apartment is smaller than I thought it would be given how much it cost. and boy, what a mess!". Little did he know that I had engaged in an express clean up just moments before his arrival in which I run through the house with a wheelie duffel bag and sweep the surfaces clean. and it's not just our generation. my in-laws just moved in about four blocks from us - in the past ten years they went from a big house to a huge apartment, in another city and now to an enviable three bedroom, three bath with views of riverside park. their stuff is a far cry from toys and remnants from birthday party goodie bags. more like antiques and battersea boxes and art. but as their movers left with the last load in, my sister-in-law and i welcomed new movers to take about a room full or furniture off to storage. between my husband's family and mine, we've got storage bins all up and down the east coast from dc to boston filled with family china, silver and furniture we may never use, won't want to sell for sentimental reasons. at some point, it's just going to have to get much much worse before it gets better. but not this weekend.
since i have known for the past week that this time was coming, I have let things slide more than they usually do. if all goes well, this should have the effect of a shower after a camping trip: the cleanest clean feeling of all. our house looks at this moment like the house of the one family i knew growing up in which both parents worked. I am not sure if I even knew it then, but when playing there and happening upon the parents' room with its unmade bed and clothes scattered about i would wonder what on earth was going on there. many a time i have thought of that room and that family as i step over a pile of clothes to get into bed at the end of the day. though I have only once in the last 15 years left the house without making the beds. and it was hard.
this won't be the first time that I have done a deep clean. years ago, about 6 months after we moved in to this apartment, i got an email from a mother at school who is an on camera reporter for a ny news program. she was looking for someone who would be willing to share the challenge of getting toddlers to part with their old and broken toys. at that time, since we had just moved and had only annie, our apartment was pretty darn tidy. but even then, i was engaged in the often daily struggle to weed out broken, un-used or unsuitable tacky toys. most poignantly, i had "donated" a too small walmart Cinderella outfit purchased on a snowed in long weekend with dear friends in northwestern MA. annie, then 2, had the time of her life in a pink sequined number that looked more like i dream of jeannie than cindarella. even the most focused child pageant participant would have recoiled at the inappropriateness of the ensemble. naturally, annie has a dress up box stuffed with beautiful outfits, tutus with flowers embedded between the layers, gowns that look like they belong in the wardrobe of les mis, miniature replica nasa space suits and the like. but one day, she asked quite specifically for the pink one and made a gesture to her chest where the little rosebuds alternated with sequins. i offered another pink number. "NO, THIS ONE" and the gesture. there was no way around the one she wanted, and it was long gone. I explained that mommy had shared that with some children who weren't lucky enough to have toys. (a regular practice of mine, as there are many amazing charities who collect used toys, books and even stuffed animals, but in this instance, a white lie as that outfit had been stuffed into a bag and toted to the trash by the loyal members of 32-BJ). the freak out that occurred when this came clear was beyond anything I had seen to date, and I felt awful. thank god, our loyal friends were able to procure a replacement (the last one on the shelf) at the very same walmart. and all was good. from that moment, i attempted to help annie part ways with things like broken plastic dress up shoes and duplicate candy land sets. most of the time without success.
thinking that this would be a good story for the reporter, and buoyed by confidence that our home did not look too bad, I volunteered and recapped the story in an email. they liked it, and a date was set for the camera crew to come to our apartment.
naturally, on that day, i hadn't even showered and ran home from work to meet the crew. our nanny had tried without success to put annie in a pretty dress, but she insisted on wearing the aforementioned orange nasa jumpsuit, which looked pretty cute. they crew arrived with a very earnest child psychologist in tow who, in addition to the remnants of childhood acne, seemed to be recovering from a bout with bels palsy. while the film crew roved freely, the psychologist interviewed me about the cindarella story and the reporter sat with annie, lovelier mike clipped to the collar of the nasa suit, at the tiny table in her sliver sized playroom. "why do you keep even the broken plastic shoes?" annie leans in, and whispers dramatically "I like to remember."
they finished, thanked me and left, indicating that the segment might or might not air on the 7am news the with next few days. we are not morning tv watchers but for the saturday morning dazed children in front of tv parents with coffee routine, so to be honest I more or less forgot about it.
until a few mornings later my email inbox was flooded with messages, some from people i hadn't seen in years asking if that was ME on the morning news. oh, yeah, 7am news would be one of the higher rated day parts on tv. yup. that was me in the greasy ponytail with no makeup being interviewed by a frozen faced shrink in the house depicted by the film crew with a repeating pan over the one disorganized pile of toys in the corner of annie's room with the kid who cannot relinquish even a broken single plastic shoe. note to self: do not respond to emails from on camera reporters.
we've come a long way since then and annie regularly participates in my purges and freely lets go of plenty of stuff. her little sister has been trained from an early age that things just disappear. but it still piles up and once every four or five years, requires a massive purge. so I feel the the luckiest woman in america just about now: AC cranked, large glass of iced coffee, trash bags in hand and ready to go.
wish me luck.
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