My home is less than pristine. It’s not that I don’t care. I do. It’s just that this whole cleanliness thing is beyond me. I try -- it just won’t take. I can maybe keep it together for 24 hours. Maybe. As far as I’m concerned, this is just another lost round of genetic roulette.
If DNA tests were run and evaluated, scientists would find the bulk of my family has a recessive clean gene. As with all things genetic, it’s a bit of a crapshoot. I was blessed with pasty skin and cankles, Steve, with skin that bronzes like a crust of Wonder bread and the delicate ankles of a gazelle. We run the gamut from Hoarder to spawn of Martha Stewart. If you put us all on a scale, we’d tip decidedly Hoarder, though not pathologically so.
You might argue that cleaning is more about elbow grease than anything else but you would be wrong. Certainly I’m not lacking in experience or enthusiasm. We were trained from a tender age to spin the chore wheel and try our luck. I’ve been cleaning toilets and polishing silver since I was tall enough to reach the kitchen faucet perched on a chair. Tiny hands are perfect for maneuvering SOS pads into the crusted crevices of a broiler pan and taming the shrew like inner workings of an industrial strength Hoover. Some families filled their holidays with ski trips and shopping extravaganzas. Ours were staunchly organized and charted around cleaning activities.
So I have the training. I have all the necessary cleaning implements and potions. Yet somehow I seem incapable of wielding them in such a way as to gain satisfactory results. Give two people a sponge – one leaves a sparkling clean counter without a hint of moisture, the other a slightly damp surface and a hair of questionable origin. I’d be the one with the hair. I organize and reorganize the closet, the kitchen, the garage, to no avail. Within days I’m back where I started, piles of mail and receipts on the counter, clothes jammed haphazardly on their shelves.
All that cleaning, you think. Perhaps you are rebelling against the fastidious home you grew up in. Nice try, but no. If we’re going to be honest, the place was a hovel. Despite the constant call to clean, all that wheel spinning and chore charting never quite came together. Though we were seemingly cleaning from dawn to dusk, there wasn’t a single day the garage door could be pried open. In the laundry, clean clothes were heaped upon the dryer, coming within inches of the ceiling, often cascading down to floor, only to be trampled and restart their futile journey. Our failure to obtain cleanliness was so epic, we were trained in the modified art of the Duck and Cover Drill. Neighbor or priest show up unannounced? Mute! Drop! Slither away!
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