The Humor Column

Spring Cleaning is for Chumps

by Scott Sevener ⋅ May 29, 2009 ⋅  Email this column ⋅  Print this column ⋅

I knew I forgot to do something over the last 6 – 8 weeks…

But here we are now, right on the heels of summer, and with June literally right around the corner at this point, I guess all I can say is really … what’s the point?! I mean, if it was still March and the idea of cleaning up the house in preparation for a long and eventful year was something more than merely a pipedream amongst the perpetually lazy, then one might still be able to rustle up enough effort to warrant putting down the remote and digging out the ‘ole feather duster for a weekend or two. It would almost seem sacrilegious to try and make up for all of that lost cleaning power now, here on the cusp of summer when scrubbing and sanitizing should be the last thing on a person’s mind.

Besides, if you ask me, and I’ll presume that you did on account of your eagerness to sit and read this instead of actually doing something productive with your day, I say that the act of mass cleaning once a year is overrated anyways. Sure, when you’re as lazy as I am the other three seasons out of the year, the prospect of redeeming oneself by saturating the house from top to bottom in Comet and Formula 409 may seem worthwhile, and who knows, you might even be able to have houseguests over without having to listen to “Ewww, gross!” and “How long has that been back there?!” But all in the same, I’ve always been a firm believer in the concept of “No pain, no pain…” and when it comes to spending an entire afternoon dusting … well, let’s just say that I can think of just about anything that would be a more enjoyable use of my time than feigning off the killer dust bunnies that reside behind our living room sofa.

Whatever you do, do not keep your feet on the floor while watching movies at our house into the wee hours of the evening…

Of course, despite my bitter hatred for all things cleaning-related, one other thing that I’ve picked up on over the years is that what goes around, comes around, and I know as I type this already that my lack of said dusting and disinfecting desires are more likely than not going to come back to bite me soon within the next couple of months … no doubt in the most literal sense imaginable! The way I see it, the consequences for my inaction are dismal at best:

• Didn’t spray around the house’s perimeter for bugs.
  The invasion is swift and well-executed, as everything from lovebugs and spiders to fire ants and even the common cricket team up to storm Casa de Sevener, crawling over anything in their paths and generally giving my wife and I the heebie-jeebies whenever we try to sleep at night.

• Didn’t go through all of our old junk to discard what we don’t really need.
  One day I open the front door to find that I’ve won The Materialistic Man’s Sweepstakes, which entitles me to one of anything I’ve ever wanted in the whole universe, but only if I have room in the house for it. After a quick tour of the house to check the closets and spare bedroom, I begin to weep as the Prize Patrol shows themselves to the door, leaving without ever even having to open their truck.

• Didn’t scrub the corners out in the shower.
  Eventually the mold growing in the cracks and crevices spreads onto the floor and makes it really slippery, from which I slip and fall. It ends up hurting pretty bad.

• Didn’t toss out the “questionable” foodstuffs from the refrigerator.
  Again, the invasion happens when I least expect it, however this time it’s in the form of that creepy ooze that came out of the bathtub in Ghostbusters 2. An evil conglomerate of bacterial hate from beyond the crisper, this deadly blend of yogurt, long-forgotten fruit and vegetables, and something that we’re pretty sure at one time was leftover taco meat flows with the slow precision of the most putrid slug on the planet. If we had any pets, chances are we wouldn’t after this beast makes its rounds.

• Didn’t dust whatever it is that you’re supposed to dust when it gets dusty.
  Thanks to a lack of supervision by yours truly, the dust bunnies begin to multiply at a freakishly impressive rate, much like regular bunnies tend to do, except that these ones are made of dust and really know how to agitate a guy’s allergies. Of course, they’re also curiously hungry for blood, so now there’s worry of both sneezing uncontrollably and getting eaten when coming over to our house for dinner, both of which makes our friends and family a little uneasy.

I’ll think you’ll agree that it looks like I’ve got quite the dangerous summer ahead of me, but then again, that’s the price one pays for the luxury of not picking up a feather duster all spring. Will it be a worthwhile slacking in the end, or will you read the in headlines mid-July about the brilliant humor columnist whose life was tragically ended by a deadly run-in with a gang of rogue dust bunnies and their newly-formed rancid refrigerator blob alliance? Only time will tell, but for now…

…wait – did you hear that gurgling sound coming from the kitchen?

A buzzing sound from the air conditioning vents?!

They’re early.