Deep cleaning

I will admit now that I am not the world's best housekeeper. I'm not the worst but I struggle with keeping a tidy house. My grandmother's house always looks immaculate to me (I'm sure it has cluttered and messy days, but I've never seen it.). I know how she does it but it just seems to be beyond me to keep my house that way. Oh well, I do the best I can.
However, every few months I feel compelled to clean. I mean really clean. I clean out closets, I clean out cabinets, I scrub everything, I rearrange my furniture. And for a few days my house looks great. And then it goes back to looking like two small kids and a slightly messy husband live here. And I spend a lot of my time just trying to contain all the chaos.
I think some of our problem is the sheer amount of stuff we have. We have clothes for 4 people, we have a couch, a loveseat, a TV and coffee table, DVD cabinets, an end table, Brian's little table and chairs, two beds, a bassinet, 3 dressers, some shelves, a desk for Brian, and that's just the big stuff. I keep trying to downsize, to get rid of things that we don't need or use but it seems never ending. I swear this stuff is breeding behind my back.
I did manage to purge a lot of kitchen stuff and give it away to a neighbor who is just starting a household with her boyfriend. I thought it was fitting since most of it was stuff that James and I had when we first set up house together.
I donated 6 13 gallon trash bags of clothes yesterday. I bet I find more but I still have to go through Brian's closet, again.
It really feels never ending. But as I clean and get rid of the old I feel lighter. And I realized, this is how life is too. Periodically we go through and clean out all the junk. All the relationships that aren't healthy, or we mend the ones that can be saved. We make space for new relationships, new people, new places, new experiences. If we just keep carrying around all our baggage we never have room for anything new. We stay the same.
For the record this cleaning spree was prompted by the imminent arrival of a new bed for James and me. We've had the same bed for almost 10 years and a new one is long overdue. So I've been cleaning and making space. Something new, something good, is coming. It's worth letting go of a few old things we're never going to use again.
So are the things in life that no longer serve a purpose. Old hurts, old anger, old prejudices, old fear. It's time to let those go too. Time for fresh starts all around. I can't wait to see what new and good things come to take their place.