Google Calendar really facilitates my anal-retentive streak in new and surprising ways.  There are occasional cleaning tasks that I remember to do without external prompting, like throwing the shower curtain liner in the wash with some bleach when it becomes too stained with rust, or others that I perform yearly, like cleaning and polishing my boots and washing all my winter scarves and mittens.  (Seriously, scarves that smell like neck grease?  Nasty.)  But gcal — we have little nicknames for each other, you see — (not really) — gives me a place to write down random tasks that no reasonably sane person would otherwise remember. Maybe most people are okay not knowing when they last changed the filter on the cat fountain or rotated the couch cushions, but I take great pleasure in knowing that my Brita filter is changed every three months on the dot.  See?  Gray matter and time spent squinting and scratching my head in front of the box of filters, both preserved.

Lest ye think that I’m the only compulsive one in these parts, I’d add that Pete’s absence is making me realize just how much he’s quietly refined his own standard cleaning duties.  Normally, the linen closet is his domain, since I am for whatever reason completely incapable of neatly folding rectangles into smaller rectangles and piling them into stacks that do not teeter precipitously over the shelf edges.  After doing a load of towels this weekend, though, I realized that not only is our linen closet extraordinarily tidy, but that all items are rotated in an orderly fashion through their respective stacks, towels are folded lengthwise and then crosswise so that you only need to flip them open once and they’ll be ready to hang on the towel bar, and that bath towels are stacked in color-coordinated groups, with a matching set of hand towels, bath towels, and washcloths all arranged geometrically on top of the proper bath mat.  It’s almost enough to make me want to pen some sort of adoring love letter, except instead of “baby, I see your eyes every time I watch the sun set” it would be more like “baby, before I met you, I had no idea that underwear could even be folded.”  Aww.

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