I’m a firm believer that a clean house will make you look younger, healthier and have a shinier coat.
When my house is clean and by clean I mean, moderately tidy, spider webs knocked out of corners or at least combined together in some communal spider web pile to be disposed of at a time of my choosing, dishes put away, toothpaste scraped off of the edge of the sink, mirror and faucet, moderately tidy.
I’m not talking about a big spring thaw when I blast Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, when all light fixtures are dusted, baseboards cleaned, basement window ant carcasses removed, just a moderate clean.
It makes me feel good.
It makes me feel like I can tackle the craft cupboard or put on lipstick or walk to the mailbox with my good Crocs on.
Enter the family.
Greg walks in draped in a full-body robe made entirely of grass clippings. It wouldn’t matter if he wore a tear-away tuxedo and paper slippers over his work-boots, he gets grass in places I didn’t think grass could stick. And then it sticks to everything I’ve just cleaned–everything. The kitchen floor, the fridge door, the hall, the remote(s), the curtains, the sheets–everything. I think the only thing it doesn’t stick to is the bottle of laundry detergent meant to remove it.
The kids take one squeeze of the toothpaste tube and cleaning day is officially a write-off. I wonder how much toothpaste actually gets into their mouths. I wonder if anyone has ever tried to re-bottle the stuff that plops into the sink before reaching their teeth. In a world of re-using, recycling and re-purposing, why haven’t we figured how to do that yet?
I remember someone once told me toothpaste is a great stain remover. It works on everything.
Do you know what it doesn’t work on? Toothpaste.
Then there are the cups.
My kids use no less than 29 cups (each) every day. Sometimes I think they pour water into a cup, then retrieve a second cup from the cupboard to double them up or to teach themselves about opaque vs. transparent, or to serve their imaginary friends or to google, “how to juggle with cups” or write a story about the amazing adventures of the cup, I may never know.
What I do know is there are far too many dirty cups for the number of occupants in this house and I can’t clean them with toothpaste because we’re all out.
I just want that clean, fresh feeling to last longer than ten minutes. I want someone, (anyone) to knock on my door completely unexpected and walk in and say, “Wow, this house looks clean and spider web free and what is your plan for that pile of grass clippings?”
Just once.
