So, as any good housewife should, I've been spring cleaning since the Christmas trees (yes trees...we had 5 of various sizes & type) came down in mid-January. This had not been your normal run-of-the-mill yearly cleaning. This has been one of those once-a-decade events where the purging of excess stuff gets brutal. I'm not sure why I got the bug this year but I was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic in my 2700+ square foot home. In the land of McMansions that is Loudoun County, my abode may seem humble to some but I contend that my modest family of four, plus pets, can't out-grow this home.
Perhaps my itchiness to mercilessly spring clean started when we experienced a death in the family last fall. My father-in-law, a dear old man, passed away at the ripe old age of 85. He grew up during the Great Depression and experienced the hardship and horrors of the Dust Bowl first-hand during his Nebraska child-hood. Like any good product of the Great Depresssion and rationing of the WWII years, he tended to hoard. I'm not talking hoarding like the sad people profiled on reality TV, but rather the kind of hoarding that involves hours spent surrounded by file cabinets and office supplies. The man's biggest hobby & joy in life was sitting in his office surrounded by his lifetime of papers, receipts, rubber bands, paperclips and a somewhat impressive coin collection.
Of course, when you move on to bone city, you can't take it with you. Inevitably the possessions you spent a lifetime collecting, sorting and hoarding become the albatross around someone's neck. In this case, my house became the depository for everything that didn't make the trip with FIL to the great beyond. And this brings me to my present day spring cleaning purge to end all purges... [to be continued]
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