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Reasons to clean house

So it’s always excellent when friends come to stay, because it means that you have to do something about the drifts of paperwork in the guest room.

And sometimes when you’re doing that something, you discover that the iPod that you’d totally decided someone boosted from your locker at the gym, ’cause the gym was the last place you remembered having it, was merely hidden beneath 1099-MISCs, Powells receipts, and last February’s water bill.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever found while cleaning?

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  • quirkybird
    March 10, 2007 at 3:41 pm

    I wasn’t the one who found it, but one of my housemates lifted up the couch and found a deeply prized sepia photo of me, at age seven or so, with my parents – all three of us dressed up in medieval royalty style and totally in character, at the Excalibur in Vegas.

    I thought I had lost it, and was rather despondent about it for weeks.

    FRAMED THAT MOTHERFUCKER

  • newport2newport
    March 10, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    My sanity. No, serious. I allow clutter to accumulate ’til my house resembles an archeological dig. When I finally plow into it, and throw away the detritus, I feel like I can breathe again, literally and figuratively.

    Hi there! April Henry and I were emailing, and she told me you live in Portland. I used to, and I’m headed there next week for research on my memoir. Four of us LJ friends are meeting up at 11:30 at Hall St. Bar and Grill in Beaverton next Wednesday. If you’d like to come, we’d love to meet you, too. Newport2newport AT gmail DOT com

    I added you to my friends list. If you’d like, please do add me back. Memoir project and my other super seekrit stuff is friends locked… :)

  • nevikmoore
    March 10, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    The best thing I have ever found was a check for a few hundred dollars that had not been cashed and was still valid.

    The worst thing I have ever found was a check for fifty bucks that was no longer valid.

  • garretfw
    March 10, 2007 at 5:21 pm

    My wedding ring. After we cut open the water pipe to see if it had gone down the tub drain. I was glad to see it again, next to a bunch of juice glasses. Have no idea how it got there. Enjoy the company and the visit.

  • dirtylibrarian
    March 10, 2007 at 6:09 pm

    I was sure as hell glad to find my planner last week.

    We are currently hoping the digital camera our Friends bought for us at work turns up soon. I’d hate to admit it has gone missing (they had reservations about buying it for this very reason), and I’m sure it will turn up immediate after we get another, so then what? Bah.

  • zoe_trope
    March 10, 2007 at 7:19 pm

    $5 in a pair of blood-stained shorts that I’d kicked under my bed– guess I was embarrassed by my moontime.

  • thisisnotanlj
    March 10, 2007 at 11:43 pm

    hey, nice to meet you!
    wednesday is probably not doable on my day job lunch break, but thanks for inviting me! and if i can do some schedule finagling, i might turn up after all. :)

  • thisisnotanlj
    March 10, 2007 at 11:51 pm

    ha!

    also, “embarrassed by my moontime” makes me think of louise rennison updating “are you there god, it’s me, margaret”…

  • thisisnotanlj
    March 10, 2007 at 11:52 pm

    wow. i want to see that the next time i’m at your place…OR MAYBE YOU SHOULD PUT IT ON THE INTERNET.

  • indulgent_el
    March 11, 2007 at 10:50 am

    I’ve probably found weed . . . back in the day . . . but that part of my life is sorta fuzzy. Since I’m sort of compulsively tidy, nothing much gets lost. Oh – though I did oddly lose a large flat nonstick cookie pan . . . and eventually found it jammed under the oven during a fit of mad housekeeping.

  • traciezimmer
    March 11, 2007 at 12:11 pm

    And I SO needed it.

    But now you’re guilting me into finding all the surfaces around me- WAH!

    Can’t wait to see you at retreat.

  • compound
    March 11, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    My girlfriend Claire found her autographed photo of Bill Pullman, while spring cleaning. She wasn’t a particularly big fan of his (which is probably why it had been misplaced, to begin with) — she only requested it because a number of her friends worked on the set of Brokedown Palace. (It was shot on location in Manila’s “old town”.)

    She actually wanted Claire Danes’ autograph, but the former Angela Chase was evidently too busy living her own reclusive (so-called) life to hang out with the local crew people, after shooting hours.

    Anyway, Claire (my partner-in-crime, not Danes) had been looking for the Pullman, ever since we began going out — I’ve got an irrational soft spot for both Lost Highway and Spaceballs, so I was really jazzed about safe-keeping it at my place.

  • msuspar10
    March 12, 2007 at 11:20 am

    My first apartment out of college I was eating chicken and before i knew my cat, Ripley (yes…named after the Aliens character..) stole the bones off my plate and took off running. I never did find those bones.