Housekeeping

A cleaning jag tempts fate

Starting sometime around the first week of April, my thoughts turn toward keeping house. Something about seeing the crocus spears emerging through the mud makes me want to emerge, too. The spring sunlight also strengthens and streams through the windows at a new angle – revealing winter grit, spider webs and a thin layer of gunge.

[“GUNGE: A sticky, viscous, and unpleasantly messy material”]

This new angle of awareness is usually enough to make me want to grab the rubber gloves and get started. I suppose this newly revealing sunlight is why many people embark on a vigorous spring clean, but I don’t think of keeping house as cleaning, necessarily. I see housekeeping as “home making” – of making my environment conform to what I imagine my home should – or could -- be like.

I tend to keep house for either of two reasons: When I’m feeling bad, or when I’m feeling good. I let things go, and then I catch up. My housekeeping runs with the phases of my moon.

The older I get, the more I seem to be drawn to certain housekeeping duties: washing dishes, washing and folding clothes, and – especially – ironing.

{all photos by Amy}

I spent decades in various cities, and I never owned an iron. I sent things out to be laundered, and in my urban glory days, I splurged and sent out all of my linens: Sheets, pillowcases, and my collection of old tablecloths and linen napkins -- to be washed and pressed.

In a few days, these things would come back to me, ironed, lightly starched, folded neatly and wrapped in brown paper. Unwrapping my laundry in my apartment always felt a little Christmasy.

Living back in my hometown, with no access to this sort of indulgence, I have become a convert to the joys of ironing. I know I’m not alone, here (I have at least one friend who confesses to this comfort-chore), but the joys of making things smooth might actually be in my DNA.

I have vivid memories of coming home from elementary school and walking into our old and slanty house, where my mother had her ironing board set up in the living room in front of the television.

My mother liked to sleep in ironed sheets, too (definitely an extravagance on our old dusty dairy farm), but now I wonder if she didn’t just enjoy ironing.

She’d sprinkle water onto the sheet and I’d watch the iron glide across the cotton, sending up tiny cumulous clouds of steam, as she and I both watched The Edge of Night, an over-the-top afternoon soap opera featuring a lead character named, I think, Nicole.

Nicole was brunette and beautiful, and she frequently walked down the wrong alley, answered the wrong doorbell, believed the wrong man’s lies, or fell for the wrong friend’s treachery. Nicole was frequently used, beaten, left for dead, rescued, retrieved from the trunks of cars and the bottom of mine shafts, and – as my mother once remarked, “Poor Nicole gets hit on the head more often than Mannix.”

A third grader, I frequently wanted to warn Nicole to be more careful. She seemed as gullible as she was gorgeous. The proximity of my mother ironing — making things smooth — may have reminded me of how safe I was.

By the time I was nine or so, my mother would let me iron her collection of inherited linen napkins. As I smoothed them out on the board and carefully drew the hot iron across, I could see the old monograms and damask daisies emerge.

S-m-o-o-t-h.

*********************

Last week we had one day of warm weather.

Drawn to the imagined glories of my back porch, I was horrified by the winter flotsam that had gathered there. I’m talking about recycling bins, surplus Christmas lights, broken crockery, curled and crusty leaves, and one desiccated frog.

I decided to lay in my own filth for awhile (the sun made me so sleepy), so I just plopped down on the dirty porch-couch and commenced my reading of “Housekeeping,” Marilynne Robinson’s wonderful and lyrical novel which is NOT AT ALL ABOUT HOUSEKEEPING. Instead, Housekeeping seems to be a chronicle of the exact opposite. It is about a tiny family of girls and women whose home basically seems to be sinking back into the earth through neglect.

That description does not do this wonderful novel justice, and I will NOT be submitting this as a Goodreads review. I am saying, however, that after a couple of chapters reading this book on my filthy porch in the wan sunshine, I finally couldn’t stand it anymore.

I switched to a thriller (Brad Meltzer’s Lightning Rod), which, now that I think of it, features a Nicole-like character who gets beat up a lot.

Then, experiencing something of a mini-frenzy, I spent the next two or three hours cleaning the porch to ready it for the season. I can’t wait to fill it with daffodils, brought in from the yard.

People who live in winter climes are supposed to know better than to clean their porches too early in the season. My burst of spring-fed energy immediately brought forth another blast of winter. A big one.

(morning: April 19 — I take full responsibility)

This blizzardette, I know, is my fault, and yesterday, as I watched the snow drifting across my newly swept porch floor, I think I finally understood Nicole:

Like her, I am a brave little optimist, as well as a slow learner.

(7am April 19; holding a bunch of rescued daffodils)

Departments

Laura Likes: Where my friend Laura recommends great things)

Laura Writes:

“I think people who struggle with housekeeping fall into three camps: the "this is pointless, I'll just have to do it again tomorrow, who came up with this system?" group…

The "I have no idea what I'm doing" group…

… and the "whatever, I might as well get it over with" group.

I'm in the part of the Venn diagram where they all overlap.

My mother is a good housekeeper. She gets a lot of joy out of it -- it's an outward confirmation that she's taking good care of her family and all that jazz.

I wouldn't say that I get any genuine joy out of it, but I'm a pragmatist. I take care of the housework because if I don't, things will devolve rapidly*[see below] and I'll feel guilty about it. Thanks, Madison Avenue. So after we bought our house in a semi-rural part of Kansas, I decided that I would approach housekeeping from a more or less scientific angle. It's how I learned to cook, it's how I learned to exercise, and surely there would be guides to show me the best way to go about cleaning.

Lo and behold: 

These books by Cheryl Mendelson are terrific, if you're the sort of person who wants to understand WHY you're bothering to do this stuff. Why ease up on the fabric softener? Why sun your linens occasionally? Why cedar in the closets? Why vacuum frequently? Why will mixing ammonia and bleach end up with a trip to the emergency room?  Why not just leave the soap scum?

Cheryl Mendelson's books will tell you the "why" behind the "how," and it turns out this was a good approach for me. I consult one or both probably 3 times a week.

Bonus: these are great to give as a set as a housewarming gift, particularly for people who are first-time homeowners or newly living on their own. 

*One example: Once, our dog was ill and we took him to the vet, who sort of force-fed Finnegan a vividly red cough syrupy stuff.

After the vet trip, I dropped him off at home and went to work. I came home 8 hours later to find a massive, luridly red, five-square-foot lake of goo permanently ground into the 12'x10' carpet.

My initial reaction was "I wonder how far I could get if I just left...start driving west and assume a new identity, maybe take a new name and get a job as a waitress in Kalispell or something. People do that in the movies."

I looked at Finnegan, he looked woefully at me, and I considered the amount of time, energy, and money it would take to resolve this situation.

I could have undertaken heroic measures and gotten the satisfaction of cleaning the ground-in, reeking, embedded red urp...but I'm an editor for a reason. I cursed the fates for a moment, and solved the problem by throwing the ruined carpet away.

I actually got a lot of enjoyment out of making that decision. Also, the former owners of the house had left it behind when they moved out, so: yeah, very wasteful, but c'est la vie. I lugged it out by our trash bins and it vanished overnight.

I sometimes wonder what happened when the enterprising person who absconded with it unrolled it for the first time.       

TARGETED UPSELL: Consumer Correspondent Emily Mason reports on “What the Internet Wants Me to Buy.”

EMILY writes:

What’s New?

“Spring Cleaning is in full-swing right now, and the internet has certainly delivered. It seems that there is no shortage of single-purpose devices to keep everything clean and tidy. My favorite discovery of late is Spade:

Look at this….thing!

What is this thing? 

Since you’ll never (ever… ever) guess, I’ll go ahead and tell you: 

Spade is a device used to clean the ears!

I cannot believe that wasn’t your first assumption.

With the aid of a high-definition camera, Spade helps the user clear their ear canal of unwanted… ear gunk. No more q-tips for you, which according to manufacturers don’t actually help. Not that they have any stake in people turning away from q-tips and towards Spade. 

So…get on it people! Stick this in your ears! 

And if you’re worried about the wisdom of sticking a narrow thing that looks a bit like an ice pick in your ear, well…don’t!  According to Spade, this is designed for everyone!

(Yes, use this projectile on a baby, because they LOVE having stuff stuck places.) 

Oh yah, sure! Can’t wait!

Why am I seeing this?

I’m trying to be tidier in most aspects of my life... this is not what I had in mind. 

Did they sell me?

Noooo, thank you.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind seeing the inside of my own ear, but…frankly without a professional involved I cannot see this ending well.

(THIS is a better idea than Spade)

Plus of course there’s the price. Spade is $129. For that price I could pay an actual human being to ever-so-gently check out my aural canal … and NOT risk bodily harm!

Thanks, I’ll pass.

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Love,

Amy