Clean up your act

Our neighbors above us have gaps in their porch boards. The dust and dirt they accumulate tends to trickle down to our porch which has no gaps. We're the only ones in our complex with gapless porch boards. Our porch is also in a corner which gets no wind, so when we get dirt, it settles. We have pigeons. I swear they must shave themselves regularly. After three or four days, the back porch looks like we slaughtered a flock of birds and overturned a couple flowerpots. Because of our windless, gapless porch space, we look like bird-killing bums.

Maybe I should get a canopy or a complicated pigeon feather gutter system. Or I can quit my complaining and sweep once every couple of days. It's a five minute job to clean out the feathers and sweep up. It's mostly just gross.

I've deduced that a good way to encourage clarity of thought is to organize my surroundings and maintain a physical atmosphere of cleanliness. A cluttered mess of a home seems to correlate with an irritable, claustrophobic brain.

Our apartment is sort of messy right now. We moved a bunch of furniture out of one of our rooms so we could paint it. We're almost halfway through, but painting is really no fun at all. So we stall and the clutter generates acceptance of more clutter... and now any form of cleaning is nothing more than keeping the beast back.

A good solution to this problem is to perform one act of cleaning or organizing per day in addition to whatever standard housework needs to be done. Anywhere around half an hour is effective. A couple weeks of this produces wonders. I've done it before. I can do it again. I'd better get on it before winter is upon us, too. 'Cause winter cleaning is rough.

I will not be dominated by my mess. I will mess up that mess.