Manuela, from the blog "The Pleasures of Homemaking"..you know the one with the drool-inducing pictures-just asked what we the readers did to motivate ourselves to clean our homes..
Which got me to thinking..is there any motivation sufficiently tempting to induce me to clean? Certainly not simply the presence of, say, dust..although I do have asthma, and it helps if you dust a whole bunch, like daily (tears of laughter- insert here). I hate the fact that I foolishly bought an animal-print-and black bordered rug for my living room, because the black looks bad even after I vacuum it.., and the hardwood floors in my place, as pretty as they looked when I first moved in, are a real challenge..you don't want to spend alot of time on them..hence the plethora of rugs everywhere..and of course, 15 minutes after you run the dustmop around the rugs to capture the dust from the floor, the rugs look like you never vacuumed in the 16 months that you've been here.. I never could understand why so many people hated hardwood floors, until now..they look good-for about 5 minutes..then you just have to keep your view on the pictures you've hung..that is really what they are for..art to keep you from looking down and getting depressed all over again.
Speaking of art, even my living room wall looks messy..I tend to hang a bunch of things closely together-for effect, and to keep wall damage to a minimum (a renter's lament).
In my fantasies, I have won a lottery or made a huge sale on Etsy or Cargoh, whatever comes first, and suddenly I am wealthy enough to contribute to the economy by hiring someone to 'help' me clean...
Well, that and the ability to travel til it's all spent..but then, when you are traveling, someone else does the cleaning-up...

"It was 39 years ago this month..."

I found a blog, very early this morning, that features obscure locations in San Francisco- on Boing Boing-by the way, a great site for anyone who is creative in a nerdy kind of way, or the rest of us, who are simply obsessive makers-
I went looking for some photos of the 60's San Francisco that permanently stole my love, and ran across a site that was honouring Janis Joplin, my onetime favourite singer, dead 39 years ago this October, in 1970, a few blocks down the street from where I lived...so very sad at the time, didn't even know she was there...
It got me reminiscing about San Francisco, the city that always breaks my heart...I first went there (hitch-hiked) in 1967, and oh my, what an amazing street scene it was-Haight-Ashbury, musicians hanging out on the street like everyone else, drugs flying, the air redolent with the smell of pot and incense and, usually, dogshit...everyone hung out either on the Street, at the Panhandle, a strip of parkland that extended from big, gorgeous Golden Gate Park, or within the park itself, listening to music and bongo players, or various speakers, ranters, and comedians who would go there and do their thing, passing the hat afterwards....
I loved it! Crowded, noisy, architecturally astonishing after the cement skyscraper aesthetic of Southern California, and way too wonderful to go back to smoggy, groggy ol LA-but, I did, because I couldn't find any legitimate work, and even then, San Francisco, that beautiful pie in the sky, was far too expensive for a poor ol' hippy chick. By panhandling til I had enough money for some beads and fishline, I managed to make enough necklaces to sell to tourists, who drove slowly by through the Haight, gawking at us all like some alien zoological forms. Between the necklaces and the underground papers we hawked, I made enough to get a bit of a stake together (probably $5) to get back to my LA job/home...working in a communal coffee house and living upstairs in a tiny room just big enough for a twin bed mattress and an upturned paint can for a side table...funky, but home...
Even then, I relied on my wits and creativity to get me by..retired now, nothing has changed much, besides a few decades of experience and a degree of crafting sophistication not really evident in my late teens. This is what I always wanted, and it took me many years to get back to it, but here I am, and all I really want to get across with this little meander down memory lane, is that we may think we know what we want-we may even be convinced that we know how to get there-but life, if you let it, takes some interesting detours that help to enrich the experience of living, if you are open to it. I was, and I'm grateful that I got to experience San Francisco at that time in history, and many times after that initial foray, always with pleasure, like visiting an old and treasured friend, but always, always, having to say goodby.