As I look around my room right now, I see spotless, polished, organized perfection. There is truly a place for everything, and everything is in its place. The room smells fresh, there’s a vase of flowers on the dresser, and every surface gleams for lack of dust.

My coffee maker. That thing gets a lot of use all year. Rarely do I get a chance to actually scrub the things out and wash it until it shines. It’s practically glowing right now, it’s so clean. I anticipate the best cup of regular coffee I’ve had all year tomorrow morning.

The closet. The closet is organized. Granted, it was organized before: at least I knew where everything was. But now total strangers might be able to find something in there.

There are no longer haphazard piles of paper strewn across the room. No random piles of unfolded laundry. No stacks of library books on the floor. Nothing lurking behind the unused shelves. For the first time in a long time, the room looks like something other than a war zone.

It’s beautiful.

The sad thing is, after a week, the room will have settled back to normal. And by “normal,” I mean “chaos.” Ah, well. it was nice while it lasted.