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So somewhere on that DNA spiral of chromosomes there lurks a housecleaning chromosome that causes this urge. Unfortunately, somewhere else on the chromosome display there are two other chromosomes that sabotage the whole plan. One is distractibility, and the other is allergies.
About the time I get a good head of steam up in January (on a rare day that’s not scheduled for an activity outside the home) and I have all the stuff in a closet strewn over most of a room, (usually the bed) the phone rings or the dog barks — or both — and I lose my place. Then there are e-mails, other calls, lunch, down time to rest and read a bit, pick up the snail mail and before you know it, it’s time to make supper.
About bedtime when I approach the bed full of stuff, I remember what I was doing when the phone rang or the dog barked, and I hastily stuff the stuff back where it came from. That’s how the distractibility chromosome comes into play.
That other bugaboo chromosome, the allergies one, starts me sneezing and wheezing when the dust starts to fly. To help with that my husband bought a high-end vacuum that is guaranteed to restrain 99.99999 percent of the dust mites harbored in anything. Unfortunately he didn’t buy the pair of oxen one needs to move it around. For the price of the vacuum, he could have secluded me in a motel room, hired professional deep cleaners and had a happy mate.
No, he wouldn’t have a happy mate because I have another disorder — I would clean before the cleaners came. It’s good that I realize that. Just think of the money we’d save on cleaning personnel. That is after one deducts the bills for antihistamines, asthma sprayers and tissues.
If I had my druthers, there would be no carpet, drapes, mattresses, pillows. Have you ever seen blown up pictures of dust mites in carpets — not to mention the bedding? It makes me want to move out but I can’t because of the pollen outside.
Housecleaning has gone way down in our priorities because of all our labor saving gizmos. No longer do we have the annual ritual to drag out rugs and beat the bejeebers out of them on the clothes lines, which hardly anyone has anymore, except my neighbor and me.
Now there are all those chemical doohickies to clean with — something to sanitize the counters, wipe up the floor, dust the walls, sparkle the windows. No need for elbow grease, the advertising promises. Overuse of these antibacterial miracles, I think, will leave us all wimps when a germ-bearing bug comes along.
The down side, though, is most of these magic wands are not “green” helpers. An example for me happened years ago when I decided to clean the oven with one of those “do everything” sprays. Hitherto, it had been just me, my SOS pads and Minnesota Public Radio. The can directions said to spray it on, let it set and three or four hours later wipe if off. Easy.
About an hour after I sprayed the magic stuff, I was felled by a reaction to the concoction and could barely breathe. I milked that reaction for all it was worth for years but finally realized if the oven was ever going to get cleaned I had to go back to the SOS pads and elbow grease.
When we bought a new stove, we got the self-cleaning kind but when I read the directions, I freaked out. I can’t imagine turning it on because it achieves a temperature equal to a crematorium and uses a jillion watts of electricity. I went back to wiping it down just in time for rhubarb pie boil over in June.
Curtains are a piece of cake now compared with my childhood. We had curtain stretchers which required pushing the curtain fabric onto the pins embedded on a wooden frame. Now it’s into the washer, then the dryer and if the “no ironing required” label keeps its word, back onto the window.
You have not lived until you’ve cleaned wallpaper with the pink pliable clay-like substance we used to clean wallpaper — before the days of vinyl or washable wallpaper. It came in a can and was the color of bubble gum. It took a little practice to maneuver it on the wall so one didn’t leave smears but it had the ability to tell you when you needed a clean chunk — it turned gray or darker as it picked up the soil. Walls were also dirtier “back then” because of our heating systems and cooking gear. There was also the hazard with this method of housecleaning that the kids got to throwing it at one another.
So life is easier on the housecleaning front, but no where near as satisfying. Now that I have stalled until August, next week I am going to start cleaning closets — that is, if the phone doesn’t ring.
Buck is a community columnist for the Winona Daily News and lives in Winona.
