Spring clean in Autumn

The autumn colors are not very evident near my house. The trees are still green; the sea is aquamarine and the sky is a clear cloudless blue, not very different from other days. There is definitely a nip in the air and the cold sometimes bites into you making you shiver and your eyes water.

I have been looking through all my files and folder; very busy, deleting, organizing and renaming all documents. I have felt bad deleting my old loved games and felt good in case of all the duplicates that I have and the millions of temporary files and folders that lie around languishing in hidden corners of my virtual world! 


I have given a nice scrub and shine to my keys and screen so that they look almost new (Though the keys have become quite worn out and so cannot disguise their age!) The tiny dust particles wedged between the keys refuse to come out like an overdue baby. I think I need to get a vacuum cleaner for this. I still have to do all this to my external hard drive. It is half and half – half of it is beautiful, spic and span and other half is a dumping ground! I have been piling things recklessly into it. If it was a cupboard, the moment I touched the door the whole lot would come tumbling out!

My virtual world in the last few years has taken precedence over my real world. Earlier, come September, I would get busy cleaning one drawer after another, one cupboard after another and one shelf after another; throwing stuff, cleaning bottles, wiping shelves, putting newspaper wherever required and airing my clothes in the sun. I remember it used to be quite a marathon when everyone- husband, kids and maid would be involved. I remember the arguments over throwing stuff out and the " "humphs" and sulks that would ensue out of this exercise.

“Hey here’s the book I had been looking for!”

“My mermaid Barbie has been lying here all the time!”

“You purposely hid this T-shirt here so I couldn’t wear it”

All these followed by

“I am giving all these books and papers to the raddiwala”

“All the toys are going to the orphanage”

"That T-shirt is going to be my new duster”

After much argument and wrangling I would be successful in selling half of the books and papers. All the toys would be bathed and laid out neatly before they would be repacked and kept in the loft. But the T- shirts were always my successes; I nearly always managed to turn them into dusters. For this I have to thank my maids (They were always loyal to me!)

Now away from home I have less of throwaways; one child has left home and the other is so anti organizing that I do not touch her stuff till a threat of epidemic comes on top of me. Husband has become older and wiser; he lets me do what I want so there is no spate of real cleaning in my real world!

Old habits die hard! So here I am doing the same thing in my virtual world. This world is more pliable as there is no one to argue (except the teenager who shares a part of this!); anyway I never ask, I just ruthlessly devour! This world is unfortunately boring; what is the fun in doing something without any obstacles? Anyway my very orderly and disciplined mind gets pleasure in sorting out stuff and then paring, cutting, trimming and cleaning everything.

Here I have a different set of objections

“Don’t delete my pictures”

“Delete all the useless stuff”

“Don’t delete my music”

“Why don’t you do them yourself?”

“Nah! Leave them! They aren’t hurting you anyway. I will look at them when I have time”

When there is a question of virtual connected with the real, no one has the time and nothing is useless!

So as usual I take the blame and weed out everything as ruthlessly as possible. Virtually everything is getting cleaner; still a lot to be done though.

It would be good idea if we could take the trash out our minds and spring clean it to its pristine cleanliness. There are thousands of memories I would love to delete and thousands I would rename and put in new folders and lots that I would copy and paste in the right half of my brain from my left half.

In brief it’s time to spring clean in autumn!