The Holidays are Coming
Too soon for me as my Christmas cards are still in the box. I’ve been meaning to take the time to write them and pop them in the mail. Where does the time go? Oh, yeah, I spend it chasing dust bunnies.
I Love Christmas
What’s better than sharing conversations over cookies and eggnog (or Kahlua and cream)? Add a brightly decorated tree, colored lights in the room, and Dean Martin crooning, Baby It’s Cold Out There. Perfection, right?
I’ve been really busy the last several weeks and there’s no let up until after next week. Sweets? Not a one in the house. And I love to bake. Poor Alex has been without cookies or gobs for months. Good for me that he’s a patient man. What have I been doing with my spare time?
Oh, yeah, I spend it chasing dust bunnies.
Friends for the Holidays
Hopefully we’ll be lucky enough to have friends come to visit for wine, snacks, and conversation. No formal dinners, nothing fancy. Our tenure in these friendships ranges from almost two years to over twenty. I’ve no need to impress them with anything, by now they’re used to my casualness.
Our house is clean but not spotless, tidy but not showcase material. Could I find time to clean it top to bottom, including baseboards I never think about, before friends stop by? Sure, but what suffers as a result? My writing time? Time with Alex? Cookie baking?
Would my friends even care about the dust bunnies under the couch? Maybe if the bathroom sink had scum around the edges or the kitchen floor were covered with stains. Maybe then I’d get a wise guy comment or two. I’m pretty good at maintaining those things—it’s rather necessary, isn’t it? Simple cleanliness. Like wiping the stove off after cooking or rinsing the sink out when you’ve used the garbage disposal.
But what about the dust?
I Hate Dusting
I’ve always hated dusting. As a kid Mom had an old can vac I’d use on the wood and linoleum floors throughout the house. I’d change out the smooth head for the round bristled one. You know, that one intended for curtains. (Who does that?) I’d use it for dusting the coffee tables, end tables. You name it—I dusted/vacuumed it.
And I caught a slew of dust bunnies with it.
I thought I was the cat’s meow until Mom spied on me. She caught me sucking cigarette butts out of the ashtray with it, demanding to know what I was doing. I thought I was being efficient. She did not agree.
In college, I would take off a sock, wipe the dust from some surface and then toss the sock in the laundry. You’d think only college guys would do that, eh? My socks never smelled as badly as theirs did.
Back to the present day. Alex uses the best filters in our furnace. We have well-sealed windows. We live on a quiet street. Still the dust comes. It settles on our dressers, nightstands, and tables. And it stays.
I dust with a microfiber cloth. I vacuum. The next day, the dust is back. I don’t feel like I’m ever ahead of it. So when our friends come to visit, they’ll get to meet our resident dust bunnies. Maybe they’ll only mind if I start naming the fuzzy little critters.
In the meantime, Erma Bombeck had it right, didn’t she? Live life more; clean the house less.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
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Read: Christmas
Rose, I just peed my pants. You are tooooo funny! Dust is mostly human skin which is SO disgusting but makes naming your dust bunnies seem like an OK thing to do.
Snicker, snicker.
Ew, I had forgotten that about the shedded skin. There was a great TV show a long time ago that had a whole segment about a full-sized dust mite. Northern Exposure maybe?
I hate dusting!!!! The dust multiplies like rabbits in my house and I don’t know why, either! Oh, and don’t forget the tumbleweeds of dog hair.
On a side note, I seem to remember sucking up cigarette butts with a sweeper, too!
This is great! So my readers are admitting to using their socks to dust and their vacuums to eliminate cigarette butts! The truth is coming out!
There’s never any dog hair in your salon, Dawn–that’s something!
Nice idea but it doesn’t “fly” in our house. Why? Two words: Dog Hair. The dog hair has a life of its own, it’s everywhere (hence the “fly”) and there’d be no safe cooking baking in this house without some cleaning first. And don’t look closely in the corners and above the blinds, etc because it actually sticks in the cobwebs that we typically miss. The positive part of that last sentence is that’s once it’s stuck in the cobwebs it stays in place!
HA! On the cobwebs helping hold the dust! As a former cat owner, I totally understand about the pet hair. Next pet: a dog like Seester’s airedales–they don’t shed!
Do you remember the Adams Family? Yup, that’s me and I know live in that house. If you don’t look up or in the corners, don’t turn the lights on and you keep to the path of least resistance you will never notice. A nice fire a good bottle of wine, good friends and no one will ever notice… “Thing” going for the cookies. Merry Christmas!
Loved the Adams Family. We had a cousin we fondly called, Lurch, for his slow way of talking.
I find that if I don’t wear my reading glasses around the house, it looks a whole lot cleaner. So friends, if I swipe your spectacles along with your coats when you come to visit, don’t be surprised!
A good reminder that (well hopefully) friends don’t come over to inspect the house…they come to spend time together!
Socks make great cleaners!
If I didn’t love you already, my niece, I love you now because you do that!
I thought I was the only one who dusted with a sock….love you
I do that, too!