My mother has worked full-time since I was very young, and she did quite well for herself and for us. As such, from the time I was in 3rd grade and my brother was in kindergarten, Daniel and I spent afternoons and early evenings at home alone, one of us setting fire to the microwave by REFUSING TO REMOVE THE METAL WRAPPER FROM POPTARTS, but I don’t remember which one of us that was, except it was a 10-year-old, who was also a boy and also my brother and maybe he squealed just a little bit and jumped up and down instead of turning off the microwave. We spent the years before the Internet’s regrettable entrance into our home mostly watching television and fighting over who called which end of the couch and whether or not the person who called the good spot had also remembered to call the remote. Because if you ain’t got the remote, that spot means jack squat to you, suckah. Might as well give it to me. Or I’ll punch you in the face.

Don’t get me wrong, we loved each other a lot. We just showed that love by beating the ever-living snot out of each other while we watched first-run episodes of Saved by the Bell and Full House. It took until about five minutes ago for me to realize that my possession of the remote never really mattered because we watched the same thing every day anyway. Whatever.

My mother kept us fed and mostly bathed, and we lived far from squalor, but our home was never the picture of sparkling cleanliness. The laundry did pile up and there was a perpetually evolving collection of wrappers and crumbs on the end tables. I’d awaken at half-past way too late o’clock on Saturdays and find my mother, a spring of energy I don’t think I’ve ever possessed, even collectively, mopping the kitchen, dusting the entertainment center, painting bedrooms, installing hardwood floors, and/or just rocking the weekend in general. Back then, I found the early-afternoon vacuuming obnoxiously detrimental to my thirteenth hour of sleep, but I now realize it was the only time my mother had to keep our home on the safe side of that line between livability and filth.

I think it would be safe to say that while I did appreciate the squeaky-clean and scrumptious scents that filled the house on such Saturdays, I slept or whined through most of it. I didn’t learn early on (or at all, really) how to maintain an acceptable level of tidy habitability. The smell, though, yum.

As such, I have what might be considered a thriving addiction cleaning products, chemicals, implements, and scents. For all the crap, which is created and intended to be used to make my home and life less crappy, I sure do live with, around, and surrounded by a lot of crap. My Saturdays fall seriously short of my mother’s. I am less than faithful at regularly dusting or vacuuming. I suck at installing hardwood floors and I’m too short to paint, even with one of those roller things.

I moved into this apartment way back at the end of February, but it wasn’t the most conducive time to healthily rebuild and redesign. Ever desiring to outlive the past, I’ve recently resolved to focus on one room at a time. I’ve moved a lot in the past several years (five times in four years), and never really gotten the hang of home. Slowly, but surely, I hope to make this space my own.

As I spend far too much time on the Internet (See also, ¶1 §3, above), I’ve recently enjoyed virtually witnessing some incredibly creative and fabulous and beautiful, but definitely not-in-my-budget redecorations in various Internetty-type people’s homes. The photographs are interesting and inspiring. We’ll see how this goes.

The bathroom is first.