May 23rd, 2019

I only recently discovered something about myself.  I am not nearly as clean and tidy a person as I'd always believed.  This was more than a little surprising to me. I  have always been a little house-proud y'know?  Pleased that I provided a clean and tidy environment for my family.  Well that'll show me.  Pride goeth and all that.

The way I found this out was whe  I recently needed a particular casserole dish that was in the cabinet above the fridge.   I only put things in there that I rarely use because it's not an easy cabinet to access.  Anytime I need something up there I have to either ask a tall person to fetch it down for me, or haul out my trusty step stool, climb up, get out what I need, step down while still holding said object (which can be tricky for me), set object down, fold up the step stool and return it to when it came. When I no longer need the object, it's the same thing in reverse.  Not all that difficult I suppose, but often more steps than I generally care to employ.

Anyway, since no tall person was currently available to me and there was no way around needing that casserole dish (dang it) I used the step stool method.  While I was atop the step stool I realized, to my horror, how totally gross the top of my fridge is.  Yuck!  And I asked myself, "When was the last time I cleaned this?".  And here is the even grosser part, I couldn't remember when!  Ewwwwww!

Now the fridge itself, as you can see from the photo, is clean.  The cabinets are clean.  And even what you can see of the glasses in the cabinet are clean.  But the top of the fridge is like no-man's land.  Really rough.

I suspect that this is the issue:

This is as high as I can reach from the floor.  This is me standing very straight and really stretching my hand. I certainly cannot SEE the top of my fridge. So apparently, without me realizing it, my policy is, "If I cannot see it, I do not clean it".  Oh dear.

I was on a dusting/polishing kick yesterday.  I removed everything from the surface of every wooden piece of furniture in the house, one piece at a time, dusted and polished the top, replaced everything and then moved down dusting and polishing the sides, the front and the legs.  Every single wooden piece of furniture in the house EXCEPT (and I just now realized this) the top of the display cabinet in the living room.

Of all the furniture that Tim and I have ever purchased, this is one of our favourites.  We found it back in Colorado about fifteen years ago and after much debate, decided to bring it with us here even though it is probably  too large for the house.  It is probably 5 feet long and taller than I am which means I never see the top of it either.  So yesterday when I cleaned and polished everything, that means I also did the display cabinet EXCEPT for the top!  What the heck?  How could I have missed that?

It wasn't an intentional snub.  It isn't as if I chuckled evilly to myself, "I'll clean everything except the top of the cabinet. That'll show 'em" (who "they" are I have no idea) It just actually  never crossed my mind. Please note that everything inside is sparkling clean as are the glass shelves and the glass fronts. But the top is probably laden with dust.  I don't know for certain by the way,  I just know that I haven't cleaned it lately.  And in fact, I can't remember the last time I cleaned that either.  Yikes!

When I think about it, I haven't cleaned the top shelves of any closets, bookshelves or cabinets, the tops of any mirrors of artwork or the tops of doorframes.  And, holy cats, I just realized, that even when I wash the cars, I never wash the roof of the cars!  This is ridiculous!  Clearly I have a problem.

Apparently I am not only height challenged, I am also height biased!   Once again it appears that if I can't see it, I don't clean it!  This. Is. So. Weird! 

I wonder if this is something specifically "Sam" or if other shorties do this too?  And conversely, I wonder if tall people don't clean the stuff that's down low very often?  Hmmmm
That's a thinker for sure.

Let me know.  Is it just me?  Or does this happen to other people too?  I won't be offended if it's just me, by the way.  I am honestly just curious.