Cleaning up

Until I got sick (I'm looking at you, Jonathan Demme), I was on this cleaning and organizing kick for the new year. We've successfully cleaned up the girl's room and save for a few stacks of magazines and comic books, the master bedroom is almost there too.

Unfortunately, my cleaning and organizing efforts have been like digging in sand. When I get one area kind of done and move on to another area, the area I just cleaned attracts new clutter. Which is not above reason, I understand. When there's an empty space in a house, don't people tell you that you need to put something there or else it looks soooo empty? When you finish all the ice cream in the freezer, don't you look and go, time to buy more ice cream? When you finally get your bathtub sparkling, don't you just want to soak your hard-working, filthy body in it? So my that's one of my sad realizations--the analogy of my cleaning efforts is like cleaning a filthy tub, ad nauseum. Who has it worse, me or Sisyphus? Well, I guess Sisyphus, because I'll get to stop when I die.

The other sad realization (or probably just a realization that sucks) is that this place needs a new coat of paint badly. With all the scuff marks, holes, scrapes, dirt, etc., the walls just add an overpowering dinginess to a room. The worst? The main bathroom. When I go to my friends' houses, their bathrooms are like episodes of the Martha Stewart show. My bathroom, on the other hand, is like a Lifetime Movie rape scene. My friends' bathrooms have a scented candle burning and cute towels folded on the counter. Our bathroom suffers from windowless, flourescent lighting, the dirty, banged-up walls, and the dim, dingy shower stall. Cleans walls would go a long way in brightening it up.

The decorators on HGTV all say that paint is the best value for improving a room. The problem is I hate painting. I did a huge job a number of years ago and by the end, I would have rather been told to drink paint than to roll it on the walls. I would love to hire painters but my gut says it'll be cost-prohibitive. Though I'm gathering some numbers, I got a feeling that it's going to come down to me doing it. Which sucks a lot. I really don't know if I can muster up that much motivation. It's bad enough I've got a filthy tub to clean, right?