We have a very strange relationship with the furniture in our house. At least most of us anyway. We run to the store, see something we love, can't wait to get it home and then finally after it's delivered and we get to admire how beautiful our home now is, we then wait until we start to see spider webs and dust bunnies before we clean under, over or around it. Funny how we just expect it to sit there and serve our purpose and yet not give it one-tenth the care that it deserves.

Admit it. Unless you're a real little Suzy Homemaker, dusting your coffee table or vacuuming your sofa is not exactly on the top of your list of things to do. There's always something else to do, like go to work, cook dinner, wash the dishes, do the laundry, or whatever else we have laying around the house. Oh and paying the bills is a definite top priority. Of course for some of us, they sometimes take a back seat as well.

And it's funny how when we're sitting in the living room and watching TV and sipping our glass of cola or whatever we're drinking, we'll take a moment to wipe up the water spot on the table but we'll completely disregard the ten tons of dust that's accumulated around that water spot. Would it kill us to take a dust rag to the table and clean it off? It takes all of maybe two minutes to dust an average size coffee table. Yet, we don't do it until it gets to the point where people start to talk or you can't find your pencil for doing the crossword puzzle.

And our lamps? Forget about every dusting around them. There's always a great excuse for that too. They're on and too hot to get near. And after all, you can't dust in the dark so you can't turn the lamp off to dust it. Next time you get the chance, take a good look under the lamp shade. You'll see a family of heaven knows what growing under there. But the worst offenders have to be the sofas. These are for sitting on, period. And since we're not exactly dirt free why bother cleaning our sofa on a regular basis? It isn't until we spill something on them that stains because it is a different color than the sofa that we finally do something to make it look a little more presentable. And let's not even get into cleaning under or behind the sofa. This is where things that we've lost disappear to. It's also where the king of the dust bunny family lives. And of course the excuse for not cleaning under and behind the sofa is obvious. It's too big and heavy to move. And where would we move it to? There's way too much furniture around to move it more than a couple of inches and there's no way we're going to start moving all the furniture around.

Yes, we hate to clean our furniture. Make no mistake about it. And what we hate even more than that is having to explain to our kids why their friends aren't allowed in the house until after spring cleaning.