Sense belongs in the bin

Chinese New Year is coming and, as with every year, my mother has decreed that a spring-cleaning is in order. I, frankly, would rather be digging my ear and eating what I find than engaging in mopping, scrubbing, sweeping and wiping every single object/surface in the house. Heck, I would even rather be writing copy. Or listening to the Backstreet Boys.

But it seems there is no escape. The steely glint of determination in her eyes is already blinding me. Whenever this mood takes her, she gets her way sooner or later. And, this Saturday, she will.

But really, it’s not so much the cleaning that bothers me. It’s the endless quality checks. To me, a house is clean as long as there are no dustballs flitting around. To her, you must be able to eat off the floor and, even then, it’d require just another three rounds of mopping.

Even worse, she has been proclaiming that she is going to “throw a lot of stuff away this year” about once every 15 seconds since two weeks ago. This is deeply frightening. It means that my entire CD collection is in peril. And my MASK^TM toys. Then there’s my collection of dusty books and my Dragonball comics from 1-42.

Of course, I could counter this by suggesting that she throw away that ridiculously huge steamer that she uses once every decade. Or the dog (“we don’t need that dirty wet rug”), or all the furniture in my room which is the wrong side of 50 years old and creaks if I so much as breathe on it.

But no, those things will survive. Instead, we will be hurling stuff like the Barenaked Ladies or that Dragonball episode where Goku squares off with Vegeta down the chute. It makes no sense. But then, neither does tradition.