Spring Cleaning and all sorts of broken stuff

I have a love/hate relationship with spring cleaning.  I LOVE to have it done but it sure is a chore.  I think I do it differently that some people...and I realized that when I heard someone say "we spring cleaned the house on Saturday" and I want to ask "which room?"

To me, spring cleaning means moving completely out of a room--empty all drawers and closets, remove furniture, sort through and reorganize EVERYTHING, fill the trash can 15 times and make at least a dozen trips to the D.I.  Then, while the room is empty, wash the walls, scrub the floors, clean windows and light fixtures and blinds and baseboards...then begin to move back in.  I'm getting tired just describing it.  But when I'm done it feels like a brand new house... I love it!

So...either other people have a different description of spring cleaning or they move WAAAY faster than me.  I'm pretty slow...but I'm hoping I'm not that slow.

Now that I've got a finished basement I'm realizing that I have twice the house to clean.  *Sigh*  I'm trying to look on the bright side and while working in Savannah's room on Saturday I marveled in the fact that there was no CAT HAIR to clean up...it felt like a small miracle.  (Have I mentioned my love affair with SSSCat? It's not working all the time anymore--I occasionally find one of those monsters sneaking down there but they are well aware they aren't allowed and they usually go running.)

I realized this year, far too late, that I should be memorializing my experiences, frustrations, and hilarious moments with my camera as I go.  Since I have no pictures, I will have to settle for a written description of some of the highlights:

1. While cleaning in the master bathroom, I heard a loud "thunk, thunk" and peeked around the corner to see that my dresser drawers had collapsed inside each other.  Now... the dresser is super old, and you'd think I would be appreciative of how long it's lasted...but no.  We've had it since we first got married and I've been a huge cheapskate and unwilling to buy a new one even though Patrick keeps looking at it and saying "I feel like white trash when I look at that dresser".  Now the drawers are broken, the handles are falling off, and if I want anything out of the bottom two drawers I have to remove all the drawers to get into them.  It's time for Taps to play and put that old baby out to pasture permanently...
2. My cats have a blanket and little bed that sit in my room and that's where they sleep.  I threw them in the washer and when I pulled them out of the dryer they looked all fluffy and new.  Then I cleaned the lint screen and SURPRISE!  There was a whole cat in there!  Okay...maybe not a whole cat, but enough fur for a whole cat.  Gross.
3. Under Braden's bed (did I mention that stupid bed weighs about two tons?) I found a discarded cat hairball.  It's probably been there awhile since I don't routinely check under his bed for things like this...  It was all dry and tube-like... (again, GROSS) but it was dried up at least.  I turned my back for a minute and the cat picked it up in her teeth and walked away with it.  I guess it WAS her hairball, after all.
4. During all of the cleaning last week suddenly the water heater started leaking.  I was pretty sure it was something I did until I found out all the neighbors' water heaters were leaking too.
5. Right after I finished cleaning the toilet and scrubbing the bathroom floor the toilet decided it was haunted and started flushing all on its own....over and over and over again.  It actually felt a little spooky as I stared into the tank and watched as it just sat there, then the water slowly started to move, then a few bubbles would pop up and the whole thing would flush.  It was repeating the process every 30 seconds for about an hour before I decided I was thoroughly annoyed, knew nothing about toilets, and turned the water off.
6. Yesterday I heard a loud CLANG and the towel bar had fallen off the wall.  I wasn't even IN that room so I certainly didn't cause that one.
7. A stray red decorative towel made it's way into the wash with all my kitchen towels and now everything is a lovely shade of pink... Unfortunately, I DID cause this one.
8. Stupid me... I washed a small rug all by itself and it threw the washer out of balance so then it wouldn't spin.  I had no choice but to throw a soggy rug in the dryer.  The dryer ran for 99 minutes and it still wasn't dry.  I had to deliberately wash a load of towels just so I could dry them with the rug.  On a good note, the rug is super fluffy and looks like new.

So... I'm still not done.  I imagine I will be breaking many more things before I finish.  But I find myself going back over and over to admire my work in the rooms I've finished--probably because I know it won't last long....but that's okay because that's why it has to be done again next year.  In the meantime, for every dirty sock that gets dropped on the floor my family is getting the stink eye....