Spring cleaning goes upstairs

Okay, here it is:

Today, THE BATHROOM

1. Shower curtain and shower curtain liner washed and rehung.

2. All rugs and other miscellaneous textiles, such as curtains, washed and possibly even ironed and rehung.

3. Linen closet swept, shelves dusted, and purged of all beauty unguents and ointments that are no longer used and have just been glumly sitting there.

4. Walls dusted; everything else washed and wiped down and scrubbed and cleaned until we DARED IT NOT TO GLEAM.

5. Baseboards dusted, floor mopped, corners delved into with a sponge, the place where I spilled hair dye and stained the tile floor mourned over.

6. Drawers and under-sink cabinet likewise purged of all the things that manage to drift in there; I saw a purple velvet hair scrunchie in the second drawer the other day that I know neither girl has worn on her head since they were about six and eight. Why do we still have this? And why am I keeping a set of hot rollers when I threw away the hot roller heater doohickey thing about twelve years ago because it wouldn't get hot anymore? Did I think that some coiffure genie was going to suddenly surprise me with a gift from Clairol or something?

The girls' rooms have already been cleaned for the spring because -- and I don't know why, either, that I've not yet mentioned this -- they now have their own bedrooms. They've been sharing a room since Aisling was one and Meelyn was three and just recently, they decided that they could be on their own. So we unloaded about a million books from the shelves and hauled furniture back and forth across the hallway and while all that work was being done, the girls cleaned out drawers and I swept and dusted and wiped down woodwork and furniture and took blankets down to the laundry room. So thank heaven THAT'S done.

Because whenever I think of my own room and the work that's going to have to be done in there, I just want to give out. Our room is big. And it has a lot of furniture that has to have a sweeper run underneath it, or moved so that the sweeper can do its job more efficiently. And a really big and heavy mattress that makes it difficult to get the bed ruffle on and off without bodily injury. And tall windows that require one to stand on a step stool in order to wash them. And a closet that is full to bursting, since it is a nineteenth century closet serving two twenty-first century people.

And so many, many, many drawers, all of which need to be turned out. *groaann.....*

Grandad gave me two of my great-great-grandmother's chandeliers, both of which were converted from oil to electricity somewhere in the nineteen-teens. They are both beautiful and valuable and I was rocky pleased to get them because we have the perfect house to display them. HOWEVER. The one I wanted to put in our bedroom has a whole bunch of little dingle-dangles and when I think of having to fetch an even taller step stool -- or, as some might call it, a ladder, which are unchancy things even when leaned up against houses, never mind in the middle of the bedroom floor leaned up against the air -- to get all those ten feet up to where the chandelier would be all snuggled up against the ceiling so that I could Windex it and wash the dingle-dangles, well, I am very very happy that my husband (who has been asked approximately five thousand times to please please please put Grandmother's chandeliers up) has not yet summoned the energy to make that happen.