House Cleaning

It's time for honesty. I am not a great house cleaner. At best, I am adequate. Also, I have doodads on every level surface, stuffed animals in half the chairs, pillows and throws all over. Remember the dippy teacher in the Harry Potter movies? The one played by Emma Thompson? My apartment looks like her classroom. Cleaning it is not easy. I should toss out half this stuff, have the apartment repainted, get floor to ceiling bookcases installed for the books and doodads I cannot bear to toss, and spend my retirement savings on new furniture from Design Within Reach. I could box the stuffed animals and put them in storage, but they wouldn't like that one bit.

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I posted the above on facebook and got a long series of comments reassuring me that my home looked perfectly okay, which was nice of people. But there was both hyperbole and irony in my original comment. Or maybe there was simply frustration with how much stuff I have and how difficult it is to dust around it. Anyway, on most days the slightly over-full look of my apartment is pleasant. It's made up of books and paintings and prints and objets d'art and oriental rugs and plants such as the hoya, which is about to bloom again...

Though I wouldn't say no to floor to ceiling bookcases along one wall; and some of the furniture could be replaced...