Spring cleaning finds dirty old secrets

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Queen Elizabeth hit the jackpot while puttering around the palace recently.

"For most of us, a spring clean will yield nothing more valuable than the handful of loose change that slipped down the back of the sofa. But in the royal household, things are a little different. When the Queen decided to dust off an old painting for an exhibition, it was to lead to a discovery that would shake the art world. She has unearthed not just one but two Old Masters by the Baroque painter Caravaggio, so rare that Sotheby's was unable to put a price on them," noted a March 31 account in the Herald Sun, an Australian paper.

Some scholars estimate the art is worth about $134 million, not bad for a spring cleaning moment that may or may not have found the queen wearing a do-rag and holding a can of lemon Pledge.

Who knows? Perhaps the White House would have similar luck. Maybe Mamie Eisenhower left behind an entire collection of Fiestaware now worth a fortune on EBay. Or shoes.

Imagine the riot there would be among the retro-loving set when word got out that a secret cache of Mamie Eisenhower's mint condition Enna Jetticks had been found at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. during a routine spring cleaning -- along with a Suzy Perette velvet cocktail dress with matching gloves and pillbox hat.

Yes. Trust me. There would be a riot.

The Pentagon should definitely get a good spring cleaning. Surely they'd find a spare B-52D and a couple of snappy lamps and credenzas on the E-Ring, which would fetch a fine price at a garage sale.

The rest of us, meanwhile, are looking askance at the hall closet where dormant winter scarves have twisted themselves into a wool wad the size of a Corolla. There is hat monster in there, too. Innocent dust bunnies have expanded into dust behemoths at every turn; the rugs are genuine archaeological layers of petrified things and ancient coins. The refrigerator may have a previously undiscovered life form growing in it.

And still we stand, gazing at the dubious evidence of our domesticity -- or lack of it. Sometimes, in a moment of righteous energy, we'll rearrange a few things on the bookshelf or transport a beloved gewgaw from one room to the other. Perhaps we will heed the admonitions of Martha Stewart to de-clutter our homes and make sure that we have all the proper cleaning "tools."

Ah, the siren call of cleaning "tools."