Day 137: In the Wreckage of My Life I Find Happiness

I am Fall cleaning. If you’ve read my previous blogs you may know that I am kind of a slob. Fall or Spring cleaning for me is a bit more involved than simply deep cleaning or reorganizing. First step is to clean at all. Weekly cleaning is not something I do on a regular basis. I clean for special events and that’s pretty much it. Step two is to organize. Unlike my anal work self, I am not generally organized at home so I cannot reorganize until I’ve first initially organized. Once these two steps are complete then I can go about the business of deep cleaning and reorganizing. All four steps take somewhere in the range of two days to eternity.

My husband calls my particular brand of Fall and Spring cleaning "A.D.D Ame cleaning." I get easily distracted by one specific task and will work at it until it is perfect and beautiful and the wreckage piled up from the castaways is mind-blowing. I love the feeling of accomplishment a good seasonal cleaning gives me. I like that I make changes, moving furniture from room to room, rearranging pictures, throwing out piles of previously needed junk. What is the satisfaction caused by such a mundane task as seasonal cleaning? Is it part of the evolution of the change of seasons? There is a feeling of something momentous, like at any moment I might discover some unforeseen key to happiness.

For me, the change of season is always special. Even as a child I would get this physical anxiousness, an almost vibrating sense of expectation that kept me from completely relaxing. It is not an unpleasant feeling, just an overwhelming sensation that I can’t quite explain. There is no other time that I feel quite so . . . I don’t know, maybe it’s happiness that I feel. I love the first snow, the crispness of Fall air, that first hit of humidity and smell of flowers of Spring and the truly hot searing lick of the Summer sun on your skin. I get excited about change the way other people love comfort and familiarity. Change reminds me that life doesn’t have to ordinary and that no matter how bad or good something is, it can always get better.

Fall cleaning is a symbol of my need to not be boxed in or trapped. I like freedom. I like change. I like knowing that my life doesn’t have to be the way it is, that I am in control of the chaos and the trash and the potential for something better to emerge. It may take a bit longer and create a wide path of destruction in its wake, but my style of seasonal cleaning does get results and just for the briefest of moments, I get a sense of the happiness that has eluded me for much of my life.