Upright and clean

I've just been meditating on how great vertical surfaces are. When you clean them, they don't immediately attract clutter the way a table, countertop, bookshelf, or ironing board does.* And, they're often dirty for real, because one naturally focuses on the clutter-ridden flat surfaces. But if you wipe all the drips off a door frame -- the frame looks clean! If you wipe the dust off a shuttered ventilation door -- the dust is gone and it looks clean! If you clean a baseboard or kickplate, miraculously, it looks clean! 

It is my fond hope that if a room's vertical surfaces are clean, the room will somehow read as really, actually, metaphysically clean even when the flat surfaces are all covered with old mail and disdained yogurt containers. It works in the kitchen with pristine cabinets and appliances. Kind of.




*I will never understand how the ironing board always, always turns into the mail receptacle. We HAVE a mail receptacle. But the mail seems to prefer the ironing board. Maybe the reason I never get the ironing board out except for sewing is to keep the mail away from it.