It pays to clean

Still working my way through the spring-cleaning list... slowly, but surely. 

And making cheese.  Which is, in a way, cleaning out the fridge.  Sort of.

This past week I was particularly proud because I cleaned out from under our bed.  

This is not a thing I do.  

Monsters live down there and I don't want to cross them. 

And a whole host of things that will make me sneeze.  

So, of course, I avoid it like the plague.

But this week, I decided the time had come... and now under the bed looks like this:

(I should mention I have more than two pairs of shoes. But if you saw my shoes, you would NOT see that I mopped the wood that was LITERALLY furry 10 minutes previous.)

And just like when you give a Mouse a Cookie, it inevitably leads to something else... 

I wound up tackling the rest of the room too.

For over a year I have not seen the surface of this vanity.  (Don't judge.)

 While cleaning the under-the-bed Inferno, I found that the dust bunnies were hoarding a portrait of me someone had made me in college.  I had entirely forgotten about this moment in history.  

They got my nose all wrong. 

In fact, I appear quite Barbie-ish in this portrait (which I assure you was never an accurate representation.)  

Nevertheless, it is a sweet memory that was once lost and then was found.  

I plunked it in a frame and it makes me smile.  (Even though now I am even less Barbie-ish than I was back then!)

In cleaning up the rotting fruit bowl, I decided to make banana muffins for breakfast tomorrow and Ina Garten's no-sugar, no-flour oatmeal raisin cookies this morning.  The cookies were an experiment.

If YOU are ever tempted to try no-sugar, no-flour cookies (even if they are from Ina Garten), I am gonna stop you right there.  

Just don't do it. 

 You're welcome.