Obsessed with cleaning

For months I promised myself I would sort out our 32 cupboards, 23 drawers and three of the closets filled with the garage sale finds, clothes, dishes, books, important papers, cleaning agents and momentos.
Finally, last month, I sat down and made a list of things to do before holiday company arrived.
I began with the drop leaf desk with deep storage drawers in the living room. My out-dated collection of insurance statements went into the trash can with long since paid Visa bills and scraps left-over from reupholstering the couch. The trash can filled and overflowed. After 25 years of storing my husband’s micrometer and other precision tools in the desk, I relegated them to the tool room. My husband said he had wondered what happened to them.
I planned to clean out a couple cupboards a night after work. My well laid plans went by the way Thursday when my daughter said she would be coming home for a short visit the next weekend and my son reminded me of company coming the week after. Suddenly I was highly motivated.
Friday night, I tackled the baking and spice cupboard lining the counter with duplicates and triplicates of spices and seasonings to combine or eliminate before returning them to the cupboard. I went to sleep with reviewing my “to do” list.
Bad idea. The list obsessed me. At 4 a.m. I was awake and hauling out cleaning fluids from under the kitchen and bathroom sinks.
I was carrying an armful of shampoos and conditioners as I tiptoed through our darkened bedroom when my husband woke up enough to mumble,
“You’re up early.”
“Yep,” I said and left. He rolled over and went back to sleep. For once, I was the Saturday early bird.
In the kitchen I discovered we had four bottles of unwanted dandruff shampoo, multiples of rug shampoos, bathroom cleansers, furniture polishes, scouring powders (some never opened), floor cleaning fluids for the vinyl floors we no longer have and one bottle of window cleaner which reminded me I had not washed windows in ages. I grabbed the bottle and began spraying windows.
My only break that day was to check out a few garage sales. I saw a lot of neat stuff, but bought little. The agony of sorting through all that stuff was just too fresh.
My obsession spread to the piles of stuff stored above the garage. My son joined me. We looked through boxes of college books, toys and yearly tax returns. He found books he had forgotten he owned. I finally said good-bye to our cypress-knee souvenir clock, warped with age and heat.
By the time we finished we could not close the county trash barrel and the back of the van was filled with “good stuff somebody might want.” At 6:30 p.m. I stood in front of my overflowing bedroom closet, the last project on my list of things to do. I thought about unloading all the shelves and taking out all those clothes.
Suddenly I was very tired. I didn’t care anymore. I shut the closet door, went into the TV room, laid down on the futon and turned on the set. The closet would wait for another spurt of energy – or the next onslaught of company.