Floorus Shelficus

It is a widely known fact that the floor is the largest shelf in any given room. For most of my life I have exploited this fact, defending it with religious zeal. If it was a mess, then at least it was my mess and I knew where everything was. There was a method to my madness. But yesterday my madness pushed me too far and slammed me back into sanity. My room needed to be cleaned.

On the rare occasions when I do clean my room I always feel as if I need to stretch out—do a few lunges, make sure I can touch my toes—like a runner preparing for a marathon. Then I need music to set the pace. I sift carefully through my massive collection of CDs (exceeding one hundred at last count), searching for the perfect room cleaning sound. It should be fast and energetic to keep me motivated. I settle on Gwen Stefani’s Love.Angel.Music.Baby and turn around.

What I face is nothing if not daunting. Clothes from the past week are piled against my dresser mere feet from my laundry basket. Shopping bags from sprees past brightly mark the distance of other piles of other clothes that are technically clean but have yet to be put away; books stacked in perfect miniature to the leaning tower of Pisa; and pillows randomly dashed about the floor. My dresser is likewise crammed. Three different jewelry boxes crowd the space and overflow with everything from diamonds, to pearls, to plastic bobbles. A truck-shaped piggy bank hides behind an orange picture frame of six of my long-time friends at a skating rink. Elegant gloves in a blinding yellow lie across a tin of mints and a tube of vanilla crème lip-gloss. Ticket stubs from movies dating as far back as spring ’04 peek from underneath safety pins, postcards, a toy pirate hook, and candles. A mini locker cluttered with magnets holds more makeup, incense, and nail polish. Bottles of perfume and lotion stand in formation on the edge of the dresser like eager puppies waiting to be picked. A wire replica of the Eiffel Tower reaches over a back massager, a wooden cutout of a terrier, and yet another candle. Everything is lightly coated in a layer of dust. I have gotten rid of nothing. I might as well be Miss Havisham.

I had recently made a poster of pictures and mementoes from my past that I wanted to hang up. To do that I would have to reach the back wall. So I started in on the piles of things blocking my way. Each article of clothing I came across had to pass the smell test before it would be thrown into the laundry basket or on to my bed to fold later. Right now, my main focus was clearing a path to the wall. I emptied shopping bags—well look at that I forgot I bought this—and placed books in my floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Dust bunnies came out to attack my feet but I was not deterred, and I eventually made it to the back wall. It occurred to me that I should wash my zebra rug, as it had not seen a watering hole in many years. So I herded the scruffy rug down to the washing machine in the hopes that it would be revived.

Back in my room, I came face to face with my peacock feather. We gave each other the old one-eyed stare as I tried to decide if I wanted to keep it. The feather had been a gift from my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Watters, and I figured it was worth keeping. But the piece of spaghetti on the wall would have to go. Many years ago I had decided that it made perfect sense to tape a piece of raw spaghetti on my wall. My mom hated it so naturally I had to keep it up on the wall in impish defiance. You have no idea how happy she was when I took that piece of spaghetti off the wall. There is actually a thin void on the wall where it used to hang, which sent me into a fit of giggles that left me gasping on the bed.

The poster hanging idea turned out to be a big fiasco. First we (Mom and I) had to move my Mandala of Padmapani: Savior of Great Compassion poster to the space above my second dresser, which also had a huge paper flower, a Chinese hat, and a bevy of stuffed animals to compete with. Then we tried to tape my framed collage up with adhesive tape (this later fell over and we had to find an alternate means of attaching the poster to the wall, hence fiasco). Next we taped up a poster of Washington University’s Thurteen festival. Now we were out of tape but I still wanted to hang up my Marilyn Monroe poster. Mom went off to get some more adhesive tape, and I set my sights on the closet.

Before I got started on my closet though I put on the soundtrack to Shreik 2—the day was progressing. I have a small closet so to maximize my space I have little plastic containers holding knickknacks and the bottles upon bottles of lotion I had somehow amassed. I went through the containers smelling each bottle until my nose went numb. I ended up keeping only a handful of what had to be forty some-odd products. The discard pile went into a bag that would either be tossed or regifted depending on if it had even been used. I was sneezing violently now from dust or floral fumes I don’t know. But my room was at least half clean.

Now I started hanging up clothes in my closet, cramming two to three articles of clothing on every hanger. I have a lot of clothes. Even after properly hanging some stuff up I still had a mountain of shirts and jeans that needed to be folded and put in the proper drawer. Drawer by drawer I went through refolding and organizing so I could squish more clothes in the overburdened bureaus. I decided to give up a few pairs of shorts that weren’t school legal and tossed them in the give-away pile. I wiped my forehead and sat back on my heels, there was still more to do. I replaced Shreik 2 with The Killers.

I cleared off the top of my dresser and dusted. EW! I am now committed to dusting once a week as well as sweeping because it was just nasty. Each thing found a place or it got dumped, which hurt a little. The problem with cleaning out your room is you’re expected to throw away “useless” things. To me every little thing has some sort of sentimental value; it’s why I scrapbook. That ticket stub from two years ago is where I bonded with one of my best friends for the first time, or that playbill was another friend’s first attempt at acting. But I do realize I can’t keep everything, it just takes one hell of a mess to make me see it.

My purple trashcan was full of things when I was done organizing my dresser. All I had left to do was sweep. But that was going to have to wait. The entire ordeal had taken about five hours. I collapsed on my bed and looked over my clean room. A new shelf just waiting to be filled.