There are certain things that you think you could never be guilty of. A too clean house is on the top of my list of things I never thought that I would apologize for! Nonetheless, a first! Last night, I did just this! My cousin whose childhood nick name Jenny-jenny-poo-poo, which lingers despite her being nearly my age and another indomintable woman, who does not kowtow to anyone; Jjpp, like me, is a feminist who is intellectually under very few, if any. She is lovely and I was overjoyed to see her – but my house was just so clean!
Yes, there she was at my door and my self made – environmentally safe home cleaning products were present. I could smell the vinegar and orange essential oil drifting out of my home as we went to the door and as I looked around I knew the truth. Three days of cleaning had made my home one of those better homes and gardens, spit polished oddities that perhaps no one could ever be comfy in!
I grew up in a house with a clean freak for a mother. She loved bleach and would clean the entire house with it. Our home smelled like her cooking with a very clear, omnipresent bleach, cleanser and Mr. Clean undercurrent. My mom’s friends would bring people to our home and show them the inside of Mom’s closets because even they were not free from Mom’s need for a total and absolute freakish hygiene standard. Our home had shag carpets, but I would wager that an operating room could be no cleaner than those carpets, and this despite the fact that my father, a farmer, dragged all matter of farm in with him as he entered and exited the home multiple times during the day. My mother, you see, vacuumed the house three times a day quite frequently, and two times a day normally. She gave her life for the clean!
I moved out when I was young and made the choice of being normal when it comes to my home. I’ve always thought life was much to short to spend it in the house cleaning all the time. But still my mother was in my head, she said my house was filthy every time she came by, and I felt that I was not an adequate housekeeper. A drip on the counter top, a speck of dust on the mantle, a crumb in the kitchen, would send me into the that childhood place where we all wanted to make our Mommy happy. Since I was not interested in having a (beyond) operating room standard of clean in my home, I felt inadequate as a housekeeper and hated every single minute of cleaning the house. It never mattered, all that work, because no matter how hard I tried it could not ever be as clean as mom’s house!
Then, a few years ago, I became a foster parent who along with a house that has seven people to take care of, there is the matter of the four dogs too! So, over the last years, I guess I softened with myself. I had to, because there is a lot of work to maintain all the chores for a big family. Beds need to be washed bi-weekly, floors to sweep, vacuuming to be done and then there are the children to take care of, nurture and keep safe. The soccer, swimming lessons, homework, and so on and so on! I noticed over the years that some cob webs would appear in my corners, which of course I would sweep down and dust bunnies grew in spots where a speck might have bugged me before and I swept them but I stopped pulling out all the furniture every time that I swept and vacuumed the house. I relaxed and accepted normal, setting standards for myself that were not only kinder but also more realistic.
Then on Wednesday our last children left. Three sweet little faces out the door at once, and my husband away on business, so what is left is me the house, 40 pounds of chihuahuas, quiet and time – loads of it!
The children’s move left me with a lot of chores to do as I purged the house of the kids things but as I mentioned the most significant was the time that I have to get things done. As I packed the kids boxes and donated the furnishings, I found dust bunnies, lots of them! So a major cleaning had to take place, so on Wednesday I started this. Scrub, scrub, wipe, wipe, sweep, sweep, vacuum look relocate, pull out, throw out, and clean some more! I did not hate cleaning anymore and as I cleaned I was feeling like my house was very good, it smelled nice and became as well organized as a house could be. I could see my work and I was happy with myself.
This said, I don’t want this to become my life! Last night when I looked around my house I realized that I had found balance! It was so strange to actually see the house – see myself – and for the first time in my life see that I had grown, that by accepting that a few specs of dust are OK and what makes a house a home, I had relaxed and accepted that a bit of dust did not make me a terrible person or better yet inadequate in any way. So now that it is done I guess, I can sit back relax and let the dust grow again for a while. I’ll be gentle on myself and take the time to write, since this is my objective anyway.
So while I am happy my house is cleaned, right now it is weirdly so! It looks like I do not have a life at all, and I do, so next time you come Jjpp, I won’t be dust free and you may even have to sit on dog hair! I know you won’t mind and I won’t either, because we will be too busy talking, laughing and thinking about the world, politics, other human beings; we will be sharing our lives and just generally enjoying the company of the other. So we won’t have time to be worried about the crap that I have stuffed in my closets or which hide in my corners! There are so many more important things and accepting our own adequacy is on the top of that list, for sure!
