My friend Wendy and I have had a decades-long conversation about everything you can think of -- plus many things you'd rather not think of but do anyway. We began by bonding over useless-but-desperately-attractive boyfriends and sharing our Life Plans (which, of course, I cannot reveal). Then, one evening, I found myself confessing I couldn't get a stain off my floor.
I immediately felt like a loser -- who cares about floors when there are Life Plans? But Wendy beamed. "Fantastic," she said. "No, it's not fantastic," I said. "It's gross." She then made her own confession: she'd found this stuff you sprayed on dirt, wiped and voilà. That moment changed my life. After such soul-baring, Wendy and I were eternally committed to each other, and I finally figured out how to clean.
Well, sort of. Turns out that, despite all the bottled goop, I'm an inconsistent house cleaner. There are certain kinds of dirt I loathe so much, I pounce immediately: calcified jam on the counter, mysterious objects on the floor (including black squashed things that turned out to be raisins) and evil-looking scum in the soap dish.
Mostly, though, I concentrate on just keeping the house tidy, since I believe order makes a room look clean even when it isn't. I also do basic swabbing --
I think. But who knows? Everyone's idea of clean is different. I've been in houses where I've recoiled from a stove top that looked like a miniature Pompeii, but I've been equally discomfited in places that were so skin-scrapingly pristine, I was surprised I was offered a glass of (potentially staining) red wine.
I had one stellar period as a house cleaner when my son was young. While he and his pals were "playing" (more like choosing the least-broken plastic sword with which to whack one another), I'd clean the way firefighters polish their engines: something to do while you're on the alert for inevitable disaster.
Since then, even if my standards have slipped somewhat, I'm comfortable with my surroundings. But houses can turn into hovels when you least expect it. The other day, my son's friend Hussain dropped his ring, which rolled under the fridge. He was lying on the floor, trying to fish it out, when I heard a muffled, "Oh, man, this is bad." He was clearly referring to the dust balls, a tray of half-eaten mouse poison and -- wow, a knitting book I'd lost! What happened to teenage boys being blind to dirt?
Anyway, I hope the revelation that things are not always what they seem will contribute to Hussain's own Life Plan, the way Wendy contributed to mine. And no, I still don't clean under the fridge. There are limits, and I know mine.
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