I cleaned my whole entertainment center this evening... well, about 8-9 hours ago anyway. There was dust all over. I can't stand dust.

The place was looking such a mess that I cracked on my tv and the Xbox and played the Stereolab 'folder' in the music area and got to work. I used the towel that covered my Xbox to dust with. It was the thickest towel so I used that one. It has nothing to do with how much the Xbox blows. I also used a can of Static Guard to possibly help ward off dust by eliminating static. First a spritz of Static Guard, then a good long wipe.

The first thing I cleaned was the Xbox since it was missing it's towel. That's how I treat most of the things I have about that size. When they aren't in use I cover them with a dry towel. First I sprayed it with the Static Guard, avoiding getting the mist inside the Xbox since it was still on, then wiping it off. Sort of how you would clean windows on your house. Then I used the corner of the towel and slid it across the exhaust grill fin things in the back of the Xbox. After the Xbox was dusted, I sprayed a little Static Guard around the Xbox and wiped the dust that had settled around it. Finally I lifted it up and wiped the little bit of dust that settled underneath it. At this point the top my entertainment center was one third clean.

I had a lot of junk on top of the entertainment center. Not really junk but things that shouldn't have been out in the open. On the far right side of the entertainment center's top (it's a little over 4 feet high and flat on top), there was the old Shuttle HOT-591P motherboard box that I kept B*tchin' Fast 1.0 in, which was on top of my Gamecube. The Gamecube of course was covered with a thin light-blue towel since it wasn't in use. The box had a large anti-static bag and the ripped off cardboard flap that goes inside the box, stacked on top. The foam mat was still inside the box on the bottom as it should have been. On top of that stuff even, was the bubble-wrap envelope which once held my Killzone beta disc and stuff.

To the left of that was 3 medium sized boxes. I almost always keep jewel cased discs and dvd keep cases inside cardboard boxes. The kind you get sent to you by UPS or similar. As if you couldn't guess, all 3 were full of discs and all of the discs were encased. The largest one held my PC games, other PC software, and CD archives. It was at the front center on the top of my entertainment center's top. The discs inside were stacked to one side, appendix up. The box was too narrow to have more than one row of discs aligned in this way so the box is heavy along one side. Behind it were two smaller boxes stacked one on top of the other. The one on the bottom held my Xbox, Playstation 2, and Gamecube games. These games I keep in colored slim-cases. The box was orientated so I could make two stacks of discs face-up and side-by-side within it. The box on top of this one held 2 MSDN Libraries discs among other things which I forget. I think my super-ultra-secret CD in in there also. Don't bother asking me what's on it. In between these boxes and systems were littler things like a paper clip, a floppy disk holder with floppies in it, a CMOS battery from B*tchin' Fast 2.0 (which works), a pair of pliers, my little Logitech Playstation 2 USB keyboard, a couple of Pentium 133MHz cpus and some receipts/invoices.

I basically moved everything off the top of my entertainment center except for the Gamecube, which was still under the towel. I put all that other stuff to the side so I could clean the top of dust. I used the same method I cleaned the first one third to clean the rest of the top. I haven't used the Gamecube in possibly all year, so there was nothing on it that needed to be wiped off. I just sprayed around it and cleared the dust that settled around the Gamecube. I didn't need to wipe off the controller since I also keep those under the towel when the console isn't in use. After the entire top is cleared, I put the floppy disk holder back where it was. The only things on the top of the entertainment center at that point in time was the uncovered Xbox, which was still playing some Stereolab, the Gamecube and its controller which were still undercover, and the Gamecube's power adapter. My Playstation 2 was directly in front of my tv on a tray table, connected of course, but off and covered with a towel. Don't ask.

But that's not all! There are 3 shelves on the left-hand side of my entertainment center which translates into 4 storage areas. I emptied out all the occupied spots. There wasn't very much in these places anyhow. The topmost compartment had a small ziplock baggie with a bunch of miscellaneous things in it like screws, wires, connectors, a lamp nut, etc. Next to that was a bare Conner CFS210A. The second compartment held my flatbed scanner. A Visiontek 5600 USB scanner that's only been used once since I got it in May, I believe. It was also covered with a towel. There was no dust on any part of it which made me glad. Next to it, however, was it's dusty power adapter. The towel was just big enough to cover the scanner and not the power adapter. In front of the power adapter was the small bubble-wrap pouch that my slot-A Thunderbird 700 came in. It had an 80-conductor 40-pin IDE ribbon cable in it. Next to this, some receipts and a red RCA audio cable wrapped up together. The third compartment down held a pair of old UW SCSI Quantum XP32150W's both stacked one on top of the other enclosed in a ziplock anti-static bag. The last compartment at the bottom had nothing but dust and cobwebs in it.

I cleaned out all the compartment spaces with the same method described above with the Static Guard. Voila! Clean as a whistle. It was so clean in fact that I almost put the Abit KT7-RAID motherboard box which held B*tcin' Fast 2.0 in the bottom compartment. But remembering all the cobwebs I had to clean out of there quickly convinced me to 86 that idea.

So with all of the shelves on the left clean and cleared, I simply stacked up all of the stuff in a tidy fashion. The first shelf now holds only those two smaller boxes full of discs that were once stacked on top of one another on the top of the entertainment center. The second shelf holds the larger box of discs that was once on top of the entertainment center that was in front of the two smaller boxes that were stacked one on top of another that are now on the first shelf. Next to the larger box of discs are the bare CFS210A and the 2 XP32150W's in the ziplock anti-static bag. The third shelf holds only the Visiontek 5600 and its power adapter next to it. The towel is still covering the scanner but not the power adapter unfortunately. Well, I currently have my tv and Official Sony Playstation 2 DVD remotes resting peacefully on top of the towel-covered scanner. In the last compartment, I put my little caboodle. It's actually a mid-sized, shiny silver-looking jewelry box with a shiny silver-looking handle on top of it. It's got a lock on the front and I keep the key on one of the shelves on the right side of the entertainment center. The shelves on the right end don't face the front so I didn't clean them at the time. This is where I keep my triple-A classified stuff. You really wouldn't want to see what's in there. I could easily be thrown in prison for even talking about it.

Now that's almost it. Oh yeah, I moved the Playstation 2 back on top of the entertainment center where it belongs. Buffed off the dust, rerouted the cables from it, and turned it on. At this point I turned off the Xbox and put on some Sanford and Son on the Playstation 2. I watched the episode called "Whiplash". That's the Second Season, first disc, I believe. By the way, did you know at nearly the end of the episode where Fred Sanford is telling off the guy who hit him in the car accident, at about the part where he says "I can't even turn my neck!", you can see a big spitball fly out of his mouth, LOL! There are other episodes where he shoots spitballs like he's frying eggs in his mouth. Yeah, I'm exaggerating.

During the show I put my little Logitech keyboard in the rather large compartment under the tv and dusted the tv off. Then I swept the crumbs across the floor away from the tv area.

And that's about it as far as my cleaning session goes. I had fun doing it and there's little better than a clean orderly space.