Clean Sweep

    Do you hear that faint noise in the distance? That is the sound of Al Gore crying.  Why is that? It's time for me to clean our apartment and I'm breaking out the heavy duty cleaners.  Sorry dolphins, my place needs to be squeaky clean, however consider this some free highlights, so you're welcome..well if you had hair you may appreciate it more.
    I try to keep my apartment a consistent level of clean but with a husband and a kid it seems to be in a consistent level of despair.  Lily will quite often follow behind me knocking over her toy boxes and Dave will organise his stuff in neat little clumps which I have termed "Dave Piles" and call it put away.  They say if you want the whole family to participate make cleaning into a game, but it already is-an obstacle course and if this was "Wipeout" they would be the people throwing foam blocks at me as I navigate the sea of Lego. 
     I don't think we're messy on purpose, I think it is a result of living in a tight space with lots of stuff.  Even vacuuming 900square feet has become an hour long job by the time you move all the furniture around (and complain and threaten to make the cat into a patio cat).  We have a Roomba but it had a mental breakdown-it just vacuums around in circles and once in a while coughs up black dirt.  It drives me insane-I hate clutter, I defriended it on facebook and yet it has some how moved into our apartment and is living on our couch (maybe it's because I married its distant cousin..).  If I had my way we would get rid of all our furniture and just sit on the floor and stare at each other, however I expect a revolt from the masses if I ever tried to implement this.  My goal has now been to cleverly hide clutter in boxes and bins.
   I never use to be so weird (read: anal), when I was growing up I was a messy kid.  This held true even to adulthood, ask my mom, for the longest time we never knew what the colour of the carpet in my room was.  I think a lot of it was that my mom was super clean.  Sure my room was ground zero for hurricane Kali but once I shut that door and went into the rest of the house...pristine show room clean.  I could be a slob and not have to live in it.  I could have my cake and eat it too, and we know how much I love cake.  When I moved into my own place I wanted to be able to have that same neat space, however my mom doesn't do house calls so I had to learn to clean up after myself.    Just as I probably drove my mom crazy, my housemates do the same.  The number one argument in our marriage? When is it time to do another Sally Ann/Dump run.
So today's game plan? Fed my husband a nice greasy brunch (bacon and cheese quiche) and sat him in front of his Playstation game "Assassin's Creed"-which BTW I do not get, you're playing a video game of a man playing a video game....  It is always best to clean when your man's defences are down.
Now let the cleaning and throwing away of stuff begin!

Hurricane Lily