As a bachelor, I subscribed to the belief that cleaning house was like going to war; it was to be conducted with forethought and seriousness of purpose, and only when no other alternative could be found. Cleaning with any kind of regularity would have interfered with vital activities like re-watching old movies on VHS, arguing the relative merits of Marvel vs. DC superheroes, and thinking up creative new excuses for the mess in my apartment. After a while, the layer of empty pizza boxes and moldering socks was so thick in places that it exerted a gravitational influence on the tides. If I had gotten close enough to clean, I’d have been dragged down past the pizza event horizon and trapped forever.
Once I was married, my wife explained that house cleaning was less an event and more a regular occurrence. In her view, the entire house needed a good cleaning at least once a week and parts of it required daily attention. I tried to negotiate a longer, more reasonable schedule — something resembling a Congressional session or the length of an Ingmar Bergen film — but she stood firm.
So now I spend more time cleaning each week than I do reading the morning paper. I may not be well-informed, but at least I live in a tidy house.
In truth, I don’t mind cleaning … the first time. There’s a certain savage joy in assaulting the dirt and debris like a new sheriff who’s been sent to clean up the town. Okay, so an Electrolux triple-bag easy-glide vac with turbo-suction and a self-emptying dust bag isn’t the same as a pair of pearl-handled six-shooters, but when I fire it up the dust-bunnies quake in fear. A few quick swipes of the built-in extension wand and I’ve made the house fit for decent folk once more.
Trouble is, just like Marshall Dillon in Dodge City, I find that the place never stays clean for long. A day or two at most and there’s some new trouble cropping up. And, like Marshall Dillon, I find the villains don’t change much from week to week.
Cleaning the house means arming myself with a variety of tools and technologies. From the mechanical might of the vacuum cleaner, to the soft finesse of the duster, to the harsh chemicals I use in the bathroom, I have a weapon for every different kind of dirt. In fact, when it comes to the bathroom, I’m spoiled for choice. I can pick products that clean soap scum, eliminate mildew on contact, or cut through hard water deposits. They come in foams, streams, and sprays of various types and all of them have warnings that wouldn’t look out of place on a chemical weapons depot. The warnings clearly state that it’s violation of Federal law to use these products in a manner inconsistent with the instructions and strongly hint that it’s not really a good idea to use them at all. Of course, like Marshall Dillon, I’m more focused on cleaning up Dodge than I am on my own safety.
Not that I really stand a chance; the house itself has turned against me. Like every good villain, my house revels in dirt. It likes to invite in dust and mud and the occasional mystery carpet stain. It has drawn the pets and children into its circle of evil and convinced them that my floors are really just an extenstion of the trash.
For the pets, this is second nature. They’re like the hired thugs that hang around a ne’er-do-well rancher. The minute my back is turned the bird tosses seed husks from his dish onto the carpet. The cat plucks tufts of hair and leaves them scattered around the house like some kind of weird voodoo warning that my hair might be next. Once I finish cleaning up after them, I know I have about twenty minutes to enjoy it before these two revert to their villainous ways.
My sons prefer to drop things that jam the vacuum cleaner (car keys, biology texts, backpacks that cost seventy dollars and rarely last more than a week in the rough-and-tumble environment of a school), things with sharp edges (car keys, small Lego pieces, and even smaller Lego pieces) or both (car keys, large Lego pieces and half-completed Lego projects). Years of experience have taught me to recognize objects by the distinctive sound they make as they travel through the vacuum’s hose and filter; there’s the panicked flutter of a piece of paper, the gentle rattle of a paper-clip, and the solid, vacuum-destroying thunk! of a car key.
I’d get mad at them, but the truth is that in the battle against dirt I’m actually a double-agent. The mess I clean up may be my own.
Except in the yard. Like the inside of the house, keeping the outside tidy is a never-ending chore. Instead of battling my pets and my sons, though, I’m up against the formidable powers of Mother Nature.
During the summer I work hard to keep my lawn neat and trimmed; I have to because my grass grows aggressively. At night, if I leave the window open, I can hear the blades groaning as they stretch and try to get an extra inch or two. That eerie sound is punctuated by the occasional soft pop! as dandelions explode up through the ground and fire off starbursts of fresh seeds; spreading their malign influence to other parts of the yard.
If the inside of my house is Dodge City, the yard is the true wild west. It’s all I can do to keep up with it. When I leave for work in the morning the last thing I see as I pull away is the lawn taunting me … by growing. The house chuckles too, knowing that when I do mow a certain portion of the grass clippings will get tracked inside where they’ll become one more thing I’ve got to clean up.
