Noticing Knobs

So today I did a major league overdue cleaning in my apartment. Super clean up. I'm talking scrubbing floors. Cleaning the shower. Toilet scrubbing. Oven top. Vacuuming. Windexing all tv screens and mirrors the whole deal. (No I didn't defrost the freezer) But I was pretty proud of myself for getting hypermotivated to really scrub the hell out of this place. After a couple hours of cleaning I took a look around my apartment and it was like sparkling all over. I could practically hear the 'tinkly' noises. I was just about to put all the cleaning stuff away when I noticed something. All around the doorknob on my front door-- it was totally dirty. My door is painted white and there was basically like dirty smudges and well worn fingerprints and all around it. Filthy like! I was sort of stunned how dirty it was and the fact that I never noticed before. And wondered how long it had been that way. How could I have never seen that schmutz!?

Then I started looking around my apartment and my eyes went a little wider. Every door had smudges all around the knobs! So did the light switches! So did the fridge handle! Oven knobs! Drawer knobs! All of em! I got out my spritz and dove into cleaning again. Cleaning around all the doorknobs and light switches. When I got to the closet I noticed on the sliding door that the actual side of the door was dirty with smudges from where I slide open the door. I sprayed and scrubbed that. Then my eyes got wider again. I noticed that all the molding strips in my apartment have a fine layer of dust. It sort of goes all the way around my whole place. And I noticed a cobweb on the ceiling. And that in some high traffic areas...  the actual walls were dirty.

I started to get scared. I felt like this might be the beginning of some sort of OCD situation if I wanted to let go of the reigns and let my eyes bug out on dirt and obsess out. The more I opened my eyes the more I saw things to clean. On top of the TV. My whole CD rack. The windowsills. The windows. On top of picture frames. The corners of everything. The wall under my desk where my feet go. My vision was slowly adjusting to act like a black light on anything dirty. Everywhere I looked I saw something that could be cleaned! Dirt was everywhere! The sparkle I saw just minutes ago was all dulled out! No tinkly noises!

So I took a deep breath. I knew I was getting mental. I remembered that my place was very clean as is. And that I just needed to calm down. How can I get obsessed with cleanliness when I let a friggin dog sleep in my friggin bed? So I calmed down and felt satisfied with the fact that my doorknobs and light switches were now clean-- and put away the cleaning stuff and slowly backed away from it. I realized I had dangerously dabbled in the idea of developing a cleaning disorder and decided against it.

I flopped down on the couch instead, and after an hour or two of watching TV my vision returned to normal. I didn't see stuff to clean everywhere anymore. Phew. And was very happy with the fact that I dodged an OCD bullet... that had no end in sight.

ok bye!

tOdd