No more excuses!

Alright!  Now that I am finished with seminary and have returned from my choir's trip to Rome, I have no more excuses for not blogging more.  So, this is a new beginning - a mid-year resolution, if you will.

Things have been crazy since mid-June.  I attended my church's annual conference in Denver and was commissioned as a deacon in the United Methodist Church.  I returned from conference on a Monday and on Tuesday was headed to Rome.  Since I haven't had a lot of time off since mid June, I took advantage of my first full day off in quite a while by doing as little as possible.  Part of that included parking myself in front of the tv to catch up on some brain numbing shows.  I soon found myself watching Clean House.  I love watching this show because it makes me feel so much better about my own housekeeping skills.  I appreciate knowing that, however bad my house looks, it's nowhere near the level that these houses are!  Today's episode was on the Messiest Home in America. 

If you aren't familiar with this show, it's about a group of people who go into a clutter-filled, filthy dirty house to clean and organize it.  The contents of the house are sold in a yard sale and the proceeds are used to help furnish the house with new things.

At the end of every season, the show holds a contest to find the messiest home in the country.  The premise is the same.  However, the show picks up the entire tab for furnishing the house and the money raised at the yard sale goes to a charity of the homeowners choice.

This year's messiest house was particularly gross.  Every square inch of floor space was filled with trash, junk and clutter.  Every piece of furniture had stuff stacked on it.  The bathroom was full of mold.  The kitchen was not usable because it was so dirty.

The Clean House team cleaned everything out of the house.  They found an empty warehouse to hold the yard sale in.  And thousands of people - yes, thousands - came and purchased things from the yard sale.

Here is the question that perplexes me:  Why would anyone want to purchase ANYTHING that came out of the messiest house in America?  I'm all for a good garage sale find, but come on.

Now I do have some information that the yard sale people didn't:  I saw what the house the items came out of looked like.  But the shoppers knew that the items came from the messiest home in the country.  Surely they had to have had some idea what the house might have looked like to have earned this title!

Perhaps they get wrapped up in the excitement of the tv experience.  Perhaps they just want to see the Clean House crew.  Perhaps they don't get as grossed out as I do about dirt and mold.  Whatever their reason, I hope the clutter bug isn't contagious or the next messiest house in the country might be theirs!

Amy