On New Year's Eve I decided to clean the floors because they had gotten to the point where every time I looked down I couldn't live with myself.

I hate doing floors.

I hate going floors because with two cats, one being long-haired, and having laminate floor in most of the downstairs, every fur tumbleweed, every piece of dust, litter and detritus just leaps out and screams at me.

The house I grew up in was almost all carpet so laminate, even after 5 years continues to drive me crazy.

The stairs though, the stairs are the bane of the bane of my existence.

You can't tell from this picture, but let me assure you, these stairs look as the carpet was put down yesterday.

How did I do it? A new three step process. First I used these wonderful things by pledge that Andrew saw on tv and bought for me...probably because of all bitching I do about the cat hair.

http://www.pledge.com/fabric-sweeper/

When we got home and tried them out on the couch, the half we fabric swept looked brighter, almost a different color than the control side of the couch. It's that incredible.

So I used this first on the stairs. It did two things. One, it got a lot of cat hair up. And two, it loosened up all the crap that had been trapped by the cat hair.

Then I used the two gallon shop vac with just the hose no attachments to pick up the loose crud.

Then I used the little attachment you see pictured on the stair. Mom got it from LTD.

http://www.ltdcommodities.com/

I don't know if you know about LTD, but like a lot of mail order/paper advertisements, the products are hit and miss. Mom loves LTD and this little attachment, with it's neon green bristles and manic spinning when attached to the hose pulled everything else up.

When I was done, the stairs practically glowed and sang angelically, like in a commercial.

And then the cats came to investigate.

I predict that by Martin Luther King Day, the stairs will look just as they did on December 30th.

But that's not the point.

The point is, for me house cleaning is like, a metaphor for larger things in life.

I hate that I have to do it. I come home from work or get up in the morning and notice a dirty/dusty x, y, z and sigh to myself as I envision time in the future, spent on cleaning something that will just get dirty again.

But there is something to be said for the satisfaction from focusing on a single task. I listen to audiobooks a lot when I clean, and to engage in the low level physical activity and let one's mind wander isn't a bad thing. The satisfaction of seeing the steps SO clean...only comes from letting them get SO dirty in the first place. I've never been a spot cleaner, more of a, let-it-accumulate then clean it really good, kind of gal, so I guess for me, housework is about picking the flavor of drudgery.

So much of our lives is about the balance of maintenance (mowing the lawn, cleaning out the car, getting milk for the 5 millionth time) and doing the fun stuff we all enjoy. How does one appreciate the satisfaction in the drudgery, and remind oneself to appreciate the time they get for doing things they enjoy? That is one of my goals for the new year, to be less cranky about the house cleaning, and to appreciate when I am doing the things I enjoy.

And, one last work about cat hair and carpets. A clean carpet can't snuggle with me on the couch or greet me at the door, or do playful antics with toys or for canned food. The cats can, and I am reminding myself of that now as Maxwell stretches from his spot on the dining room rug and walks off, leaving a light coating of white hair on the rug...