Spring cleaning

I suppose if we had four seasons this would be the time for spring. And it would be the time to clean house, to clear out and air out the cabinets and drawers after winter.

Traditionally, for as long as I can remember, we cleaned house in November, an end-of-the-year "general cleaning" that got the house ready for Christmas (the decor came on after that) and, more importantly, for the new year.

Last week though, I found myself "spring cleaning" over the Easter break, this brought on not by any burst of energy or sudden desire for neatness and order. I made a relatively simple house move, to the unit one floor up with exactly the same size and floor lay-out. Simple because it was a matter of carrying things up one flight of stairs, without even bothering to pack them into boxes. Still, the exercise occasioned some amount of cleaning; the things in the drawers and cabinets had to be taken out and sorted for relocation, and it really amazed me how much stuff I managed to accumulate in just two years of living in a condo unit. The move from family house to condo two years ago was, not surprisingly, a major move entailing really major cleaning and giving away–practically a lifetime’s worth of accumulated material possessions paraded before me, and it was overwhelming.

Fortunately I am not a shopaholic, except for perishables like food and household needs. And yet non-perishable things seemed to have materialized inside my cabinets. For example, I found so many vases and pottery items I did not even remember I had. On that score it was all quite a pleasant surprise, really; now my flowers have so many more lovely vases to sit in. Discovering other items was not as pleasant a surprise though; it was again a good reminder about simplifying life and not holding on to things.

Coming back to work early in the week, I found out that I wasn’t the only one who cleaned out cabinets during the break. My colleague surprised me with a gift that he found tucked away in the back of his cabinet: a silk jewelry box with a dozen little Chinese dolls–each with a queue!–hanging on for dear life to the side of the box which he had picked up in Beijing.

Now if only on my next bout of spring or Christmas cleaning a Juan Luna or a Damian Domingo will turn up in the back corner of that top shelf...