I picked up the house today.
It was extremely heavy.
Okay, okay, so there's absolutely nothing funny about housework. Or is there? Why else would they call themselves the 'merry' maids?
I have a certain enjoyment of housework if it can be done in my own way. This means that I'm home alone. I don't need the 'help' of my family. Such 'help' normally consists of "Can't you vacuum during the commercial?" This gives me cause to pause and retort, sweetly of course, "Can't you go watch television someplace else (like another state)?"
Why is it that you can clean from dawn to dusk, stand back arms akimbo to survey your victory over all things dusty and hear no congratulatory remarks? Yet, ask someone to carry that stack of magazines yonder to the trash can and all you'll hear told for two days to friends and family is: "I helped Susan clean today. She must have had a stack of magazines twenty feet high; there's no way she could have lifted them. Wow, you should see the house now that I've moved them. It's like a whole new place."
Isn't it ironic that our foremothers used to live in caves and then in prairie houses with dirt floors, and we break our backs getting the dirt OFF our floors? Maybe they didn't have it so hard after all?
With our 'in and out life' in the throes of summertime, and a passel of pets parading about, it becomes an exercise in futility at best. I console myself with moving the dirt around to different spots throughout the day. My dust bunnies are trained to move on command. They've learned the game of hide and seek until they gain status as dust elephants. When the living room sofa begins to rear up on its hind legs I know the time has come to capture and destroy.
Vacuuming, dusting, trash, windows, and bathrooms...no you are not invited in to smell my toilet, I don't care how blue it is! Waxing, scouring, scrubbing, and polishing...it never ends until you can see yourself in all surfaces. After a day of cleaning why would you want to?
Laundry is an interesting concept. Some time ago the clothing industry decided that its consumers had been struck smack dab dumb illiterate and replaced written washing instructions with pictures. Instead of fostering the need to read we are presented with all manner of hieroglyphics to decipher. How ironic again that in the days before 'writing' people only wore tunics that were likely just lumped together in the river for washing then laid on rocks to dry. Use the mossy side for delicates please.
I have no earthly clue what half that stuff means. Laundry has become a mystery. No longer is it simply whites and darks. And when the fabric is 100% cotton is it PRESHRUNK cotton? Or do you have to purchase one size larger to accommodate the shrinkage factor? And 2% doesn't garner you much when it's an interest rate, but 2% spandex can micro mini the heck out of a skirt once it's wet. It has seemed as the mother of a teenage girl with Gap/Express® tastes; that the more the item costs the more likely it is to be damaged in the wash. It has been made painfully obvious to me in dressing rooms when my daughter asks me, "Mom, if I buy this will you ruin it in the laundry?" My track record has left me powerless to rebuke her insinuations and protect my laundress honor.
I, therefore, staunchly support any Congressional, Presidential, or Judicial help to force clothing manufacturers to tell the truth in labeling.
'Lay flat' to dry means 'garment will emerge from the washer in a shapeless blob that you must pull and stretch back into the item it originally was (fat chance)'.
'Hand wash only' means, 'forget it, wear the garment till it's too dirty to wear then throw it away'.
'Made in Honduras' means 'falls apart in heavy rains'.
You get my point. Enough about the wash-n-never wear again world.
The cleaning solution manufacturers of America have outdone themselves. Under my kitchen sink there is crammed every can, bottle, and jar that's ever graced the shelves of the supermarket. Each one promises to make my life springtime fresh, antiseptic, simpler, faster and shinier, all without any dulling residue! In those commercials where the woman of the house is cleaning in her best clothes they never admit that you have to bend down, open the cupboard doors, take out the item and actually apply it somehow.
Damn.
I used to be a cleaning fanatic. I'd take off work on vacation to clean. There was a day when I'd clean the kitchen and it still didn't seem quite fresh enough so I'd wallpaper it. Can't get the marks off the wall? Paint it! All in the course of a normal day.
Then suddenly I realized I'd spent far too many years sweeping the same floors and washing the same windows and tossing the same castoff shoes into the same piles only to do in again the next day. Will people remember me as a good housekeeper when I'm dead? I think not. I'll be lucky if they remember me at all, considering I've spent the last 30 years inside with a dustpan in my hand. Susan who? Wasn't she the one who always reeked of 'Eau de Pine Sol®'?
There's more to life than mops and brooms. Life is a Bounty®, but not the kind that cleans up spills 50 times faster. And who's got the time to count 2000 Flushes®? Yeah, it's a Cinch®, it's Fantastik® but it's still work. Let's Shout® it out! If this is Joy® I've seen the light (or at least the Dawn®)!
I've mellowed these days to something in between on the cusp of a health code violation and turn the lights down so you can't see the dust enhanced with a liberal application of air freshener.
What am I saying, if cleanliness is next to Godliness, I'm going straight to Hell.