So, 2010 has gone well so far. We woke up early-ish (especially since I was wide awake until 5 am) and I started trying to declutter a teeny bit. I started off with the Crossroads of Clutter (a/k/a our dining room table). My goal was to get to the point where the table only held one thing: a peace lily we were sent after Blanche passed away. Everything went well until I noticed that some of the papers on the table were damp. Hmmm, I thought. Perhaps Gene spilled something when he was working on installing something on a laptop a few weeks ago.
Oh, nooo. Oh no no no no no nooooo. That darn peace lily was leaking – apparently it had died (due to neglect? I hope not) and all the water I’d dumped on it for an unspecified amount of time ended up leaking on things that were on the table.
(HOLY SHIT, I just realized my camera was on that table…oh, fuuuuuuuck. If I ruined our camera…eeeeek!).
I lifted up the peace lily and damn if it wasn’t a gross moldy disaster. Hmm, I think, I wonder how far down this goes? Tentatively, I lift up the table cloth and look at the pad. Also gross and moldy. Now, Gene had told me multiple times to pitch the peace lily, so if that damn thing ruined our dining room table, I would be toast. Even tentatively-ier, I lift up the table pad to look at the table.
Clean as a whistle. Wahoo!
(So, yeah, after I got everything else off the table, I basically gathered the plant, the tablecloth and the pad and scooped it up and into the outside garbage. Au revoir, peace lily and tablecloth that matched my dishes!)
(And then I went on eBay and bought a new pad – $23 is cheap peace of mind when the alternative is trying to replace a table that has been used less than 50 times in 10 years).
(And in even better news, Chick-Fil-A gave us a free milkshake!)