When you need to clean

If cleanliness is next to Godliness, I’m going to hell. No if, ands or buts about it, sign me up for a one-way ticket.\nOver the past couple of weeks, I have slowly let things slip into a state of filth in my apartment. It really wouldn’t have been so bad, except I didn’t have time to take care of anything before I left for the weekend. Let’s just say that returning offered some important lessons.\nThe first thing I discovered is that while it’s ok to brew a pot of coffee in the morning and accidentally forget about it, it is not ok to forget it before leaving for the weekend. This may not shock you biology majors, but I was startled to find that coffee can actually grow mold. (I guess it makes sense, since really I’m just running water through organic grounds, but I was still a little weirded out, and I decided to get my caffeine intake from Coca-Cola for the next few days.)\nAnother thing I learned is that if the planet somehow runs out of concrete, we have nothing to fear. You see, cheese is an excellent substitute. For a little while I was absolutely certain that my wooden spoon and pot had somehow, in only a few short days, chemically bonded together. Turns out, cheese is just very perseverant.\nNot all of the problems I ran into were food related, though. For instance, I had done a load of laundry before leaving, but for whatever reason, I was too busy to put it away. Instead, I did the logical thing and let it sit in a heap in the middle of my bedroom until I returned.\nWhile this did wonders for the room’s Feng Shui, I’m not sure it was the best method for conveying a kempt appearance. Wrinkled isn’t a strong enough word to use here. Instead, my shirts all looked like origami projects from Hell. \nAnother tidiness problem was that I subscribe to the Sunday edition of The New York Times. OK, well that’s not the problem. The problem is that I dilute myself into thinking that I’m going to somehow magically find time during the middle of the week to finish reading the whole thing cover to cover. \nWhat ends up happening, however, is quite different. Piles and piles of newspapers begin to grow on any suitable flat surface of my apartment (think Kudzu). I then feel guilty about throwing away the large quantities of unread information (not to mention trees); so instead, I just stack the next week’s paper on top of it. You know what they say, out of sight, out of mind. The problem, though, is that I currently have a pile about two-and-a-half feet tall in my living room of paper, ink and guilt.\nAfter a while all of these messes start to add up and these types of living arrangements can really start to get to you. I mean, sometimes I let my apartment get so bad that I just have to get away for the weekend. Sigh. I guess it’s just a never-ending cycle.