Traditionally, for as long as I can remember, we cleaned house in November, an end-of-the-year "general cleaning" that got the house ready for Christmas (the decor came on after that) and, more importantly, for the new year.
Last week though, I found myself "spring cleaning" over the Easter break, this brought on not by any burst of energy or sudden desire for neatness and order. I made a relatively simple house move, to the unit one floor up with exactly the same size and floor lay-out. Simple because it was a matter of carrying things up one flight of stairs, without even bothering to pack them into boxes. Still, the exercise occasioned some amount of cleaning; the things in the drawers and cabinets had to be taken out and sorted for relocation, and it really amazed me how much stuff I managed to accumulate in just two years of living in a condo unit. The move from family house to condo two years ago was, not surprisingly, a major move entailing really major cleaning and giving away–practically a lifetime’s worth of accumulated material possessions paraded before me, and it was overwhelming.
Fortunately I am not a shopaholic, except for perishables like food and household needs. And yet non-perishable things seemed to have materialized inside my cabinets. For example, I found so many vases and pottery items I did not even remember I had. On that score it was all quite a pleasant surprise, really; now my flowers have so many more lovely vases to sit in. Discovering other items was not as pleasant a surprise though; it was again a good reminder about simplifying life and not holding on to things.
Coming back to work early in the week, I found out that I wasn’t the only one who cleaned out cabinets during the break. My colleague surprised me with a gift that he found tucked away in the back of his cabinet: a silk jewelry box with a dozen little Chinese dolls–each with a queue!–hanging on for dear life to the side of the box which he had picked up in Beijing.
Now if only on my next bout of spring or Christmas cleaning a Juan Luna or a Damian Domingo will turn up in the back corner of that top shelf...