The Joy of Cleaning

Every time I clean up my apartment, I secretly want to just throw everything away. That seems like it would involve more actual work, what with the dumpster being all the way outside. I mean, most of the stuff on the floor isn't more than a few feet from wherever it's supposed to live. But the hard part is the detail work; picking up the pens and deciding which pen-cup they go in to, and so on. And I always think I'd be willing to carry stuff a little farther if it meant that instead of piling things up in a visually pleasing manner, I would get to just toss it all into a Hefty Cinch-Sak.

I never do it, probably because then I'd just have to buy new stuff. Not that I'm opposed to stuff-buying, you understand; it's just that I'd rather purchase new things instead of replacing things I was too lazy to put away the first time.

However, since I changed apartments, I finally got the opportunity to sweep through an apartment disposing of everything that looked at me funny. When I moved out of my old place, I trimmed down my possessions a little. Not as much as I probably should have, but the result was still that I had a mostly-empty apartment that I needed to cleanse if I was to have any hope of getting my deposit back. And that's what I did on my lunch break today: I stopped by the place with the aforementioned Cinch-Saks and a couple of bleach-based products that claimed to be good for shower tile, and I went to work.

I didn't get everything done, but I did manage to throw away a vast array of pens, tumbtacks, action figures that no longer entertain me, and cards. There were a lot of cards. There was also a Weber Barbecue Grill. I don't really have room for it in my new apartment, but I didn't want to throw it away, because I have great respect for the Weber. It's no mere hibachi, you know; its scientifically designed lid seals in the juices.

So I put it ot by the dumpster. I figured it would work like a couch and get picked up by somebody. I already knew that people in that apartment complex show no hesitation about furnishing their living spaces out of other people's trash (which is one of the reasons I moved), so I figured I'd make it easy on them by not actually putting it all the way into the dumpster. I saw some guys picking up trash on the grounds, and I was worried they were going to come yell at me for throwing away something that was too big or something.

My fears were unfounded, because ten minutes later when I came down to the dumpster with another Cinch-Sak, one of the trash guys was loading the Weber into the back of his pickup truck. I commented to one of the other trash guys that I was surprised that the Weber went so quickly, and I was immediately treated to a ten minute monologue on which relatives of which trash guys had grills. I probably looked fascinated, but that was just because I kept staring at the guy's single tooth.

Once I escaped the trash guy, I got back up to my old apartment and decided to dispose of a computer. It's a few years old, which I think of as "two computers ago". It really isn't up to the task of computing anymore, so I don't feel particularly guilty about deciding to junk it. However, I'm always leery about just throwing away a computer with a working hard drive. I'm never sure what foolishness I've left on there for other people to recover, so it is my practice to disable the hard drive whenever I bid goodbye to a computer. I had to dig up a Phillips-head screwdriver to divorce the hard drive from the computer case.

Normally, that would be enough for me; I'd just throw away the case in one dumpster and the hard drive in another. But I've watched enough Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to know that merely separating the parts doesn't mean no one could come along later and stick them back together. So I wanted to permanently deactivate the hard drive. I asked around work, but nobody had either a giant magnet or a bulk degausser.

So what I think I'm going to do is pound a nail right through the drive. This will have the effect of making it impossible for anyone to access it while at the same time letting me pretend I'm pounding a stake through its heart. Because when your idea of fun is "getting to throw things away," it's a good idea to try to class up your fantasy life.