If you’ve been keeping up (and if you haven’t, why not?!), you know that I timed this particular 21-day ’salute’ a little poorly, forgetting that I had a three-day conference that would fall squarely in the middle.

The point of these ’salutes’—for me, anyway, because I can’t speak for you, dear reader—is to replace an old habit with a new one: in this case, letting things get wildly out of control rather than taking care of things day by day, bit by bit, and tackling the bigger things as time allows.

So far, I’m pleased to say, it’s been working. Especially given the presence of an additional, trash-generating human being on the premises for the last week, things stayed remarkably under control. Committing to a few daily tasks helped enormously; knowing the bed was made, the dishes done each night, the trash emptied went a long way towards both peace of mind and general crap level.

I picked up some bug in the desert, so I doubt I’ll get much major cleaning done in the home stretch. But the habit seems to be in place, so I also doubt I’ll be left with a trash heap to sort through when I’m finally feeling 100% again. I’m not pushing too hard; I’m doing what I feel up to, mainly the dishes, the bed and some minor clutter-clearing.

And I’m asking for help when I need it. The BF was working on some pretty tight deadlines yesterday, but was still gracious to step up and use one of his 10-minute breaks to do the dishes when I asked. He even took the trash downstairs completely unprompted, thereby making himself even smoking-hotter in my eyes than he was before.

So that’s my takeaway thus far from this little experiment: (a), slow and steady wins the race.

And (b), you will get laid better and more often if you learn to take out the trash on your own steam…

xxx
c

Image by chrysophylax via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Today I: washed the dishes; did the laundry; scrubbed out the toilet, the bathroom vanity and the kitchen sink; threw away the rotted old flowers from last week; and am on my way out with the garbage AND the recycling.

I am charwoman, hear me roar…

xxx
c

Photo by bulent_yusef via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Not, like the past two weeks, because of what you might catch in the scum-centric ecosystem that was my tub floor, but because it is newly smooth as a freshly-Zamboni’d ice rink and you might land on your ass.

Now if only I could find time for a soak with my new roomie…

xxx
c

Photo by O Caritas via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Yes, the fleas that started it all have worked their evil magic on The BF as well. He’s on a cleaning/organizing/fumigating tear lately: we spent the day moving stuff up to the attic in preparation for the floor refinisher’s arrival at My Country House on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, we’ve lugged a whole bunch of The BF’s stuff to my teeny outpost here on the edge of K-Town so that he has a place to live/work/breathe while the floors are curing there.

I guess we’ll see how well I clean when there’s hardly any space in which to do it…

xxx
c

Photo by lahrwolf2006 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

We’re having a little impromptu craigslist gathering chez communicatrix right now, and since I sure as hell wouldn’t buy anything from a place that looked as dumpy as mine, I thought maybe I ought to shove the bags of books I (still) haven’t taken to the used book store in a corner and run the Dirt Devil over the more egregious areas of upholstery and carpeting.

Et voila! Half an hour later, The BF is $100 richer, the place looks great (if you don’t look too closely) AND I got that damned gigundo A/C out of here.

Yes, it’ll be crapped up again tomorrow, but until then, we lounge in semi-clean splendor*.

Maybe I’ll go wash out the bathtub to celebrate…

xxx
c

*Even better—The BF is taking me out to dinner! Woo-hoo!**

**I’ll wash out that bathtub tomorrow…

The photo—of a bain-marie, not a whore’s bath—is by gwen via Flickr, and used under a Creative Commons license. Yes, it makes rather less sense than most of the photos I use to illustrate posts, but I was so elated that something actually came up when I typed “whore’s bath” into the Flickr search engine, I had to run with it. Besides, it looks hot—n’est-ce pas?