I have deprived my children of a major joy of childhood.

Hiding under the bed.

If they were to see a television show where kids hid under a bed, they would probably react like my husband did as a child when he saw women’s shampoo commercials. His mother always went to the beauty shop to have her hair done.

Like him, my kids would be totally confused. They would have no basis of experience from which to draw.

How could you hide under a bed? There’s no room under there.

Yesterday, I did the thing I’ve really been putting off. I’ve known it had to happen eventually, but I don’t think I believed it ever would.

I’ve been working on the master bedroom. Slowly-but-surely/little-by-little is actually working. But with the wonderful invention of a thing called a bedskirt, I never saw the point in cleaning out under the bed. I mean, cabinet and closet doors and drawers of any kind also serve this purpose of hiding clutter, but occasionally they have to be opened.

Under the bed?

Not so much.

But as I go through this de-slobification process, I know that the thing that will make it a true change is thoroughness. Not just surface/what-people-see cleaning, but actually having a clean/uncluttered home.

So, I did it. I posted a look at my Laundry Day yesterday, and was asked why I cleaned out under the bed on Laundry Day, when I could have been more productive and been done sooner if I folded as clothes came out of the dryer. Fabulous, totally logical question. I explained in comments one aspect of how my brain works, but here I’ll explain more.

Part of the issue is that I’m not there yet. I would love to get to the point where the only thing that needed to be done in my home was maintenance cleaning. Just the normal stuff, with occasional deep scrubbing here and there.

But at this point, I still have huge projects to be done. Not once-a-year huge projects, like normal people do, but huge projects that are the result of consistently neglecting the the once-a-year, and the once-a-month, and the once-a-week, and even the once-a-day projects for years.

So at this point, I still have to squeeze in the big projects on what should be a normal day. Make sense?

And do you know what I found yesterday? It’s basically the same thing I’ve found over and over and over as I go through this process. These “huge” tasks aren’t nearly as huge in reality as they are in my mind.

First, let me show you my tools:

A heavy-duty dust-mask. And a gripper. Yes, one of those as-seen-on-TV grippers. I have it because it is the single most useful item for a slob to have when nine-months pregnant with a second or third child. Picking things up off of the floor is pretty much impossible at that point, so I always made sure to have one of these.

Here’s the view of one teeny-tiny portion. Imagine more of the same all around the bed.

And here’s what I pulled out of one side.

This is where I had to stop being delusional. Without any real schedule of doing major cleaning tasks, it’s easy to let time slip by, but it’s also easy to convince yourself that maybe it hasn’t been THAT long. Not as long as it seems. No, I don’t remember the last time I did that, but . . . .

What did I find? Well . . . . I found a pink pacifier. My only daughter just turned 4, and she was the only one who lived in this house as a baby. We moved in when she was 3 months old. And really, I don’t remember her ever using a pacifier. It was probably there from the first week or two we lived here. There were other miscellaneous infant toys, the What to Expect in the First Year book, etc. Clear evidence that I had NEVER cleaned underneath our bed. Ever.

I pulled everything out, vacuumed as far as I could with my beloved Oreck, and then put the attachment on my little vac and got the middle. On my hands and knees, but totally worth it.

One other thing I found? A fabulous under-the-bed storage thingy. On wheels, with lid, perfectly sized.

Empty.

Seriously, that thing was completely empty. I really can’t think of anything to say about that.

And here’s the after:

Yes, the totally empty storage box is there, waiting for a moment of brilliance from me in deciding what to put in it.

And then there’s the other storage thing. And it still has “stuff” in it. “Stuff” that probably doesn’t need to all be in there, or need to be under the bed.

I have so far to go, but I’m getting there. Little by little.

I’m linking up to Tackle it Tuesday. Go check it out for other inspiring tackles.