Housekeeping!

     I like my housekeeping style.  I really do and believe me I’ve been around lots of houses that were kept all sorts of ways, and my style of keeping is my favorite.  I like to call myself a Relaxed Housekeeper.  Right in the middle of the spectrum, as it were.  I’ve been in houses and lived with roomates that were…not to put too fine a point on it…obsessive and anal (you guys know who you are, and please don’t take offense or lose hope, I’ve enjoyed other qualities that you possess.  Just not that one).  I’ve also lived in houses and stayed with roomates that were messy.  I have to say I felt more comfortable around the messy folk, but we must take this moment to acknowledge that there is pleasant messy and unpleasant messy.  I once spent a short while in a house that was almost hostile in its filth: crusted microwave, ocassional animal excrement, a grimy black bathtub that had originally been pink.  So you see, I do draw the line somewhere; messiness does reach the point of unacceptability.  An example of pleasant messy was the bedroom I shared with one of my college roomates.  One couldn’t see the floor, but rotating piles of stuff is entirely different than filth, and we enjoyed our time together thoroughly and I still recall her and her family as some of the jolliest people I’ve known. 

   Back to the anal people for a quick moment.  The reason they often made me feel uncomfortable is that aside from the confrontations they would often choose moments when I had earned a moment’s relaxation to start banging and clanging around the house with their cleaning supplies, effectively heaping guilt on top of the unease.  No one likes walking on eggshells, and enthusiastically-cleanly individuals often have that effect on those less alert to messes, in addition to imposing a general feeling of inhospitality on others.  Maybe that’s a little harsh.  It’s a matter of priority I suppose.  If everyone had the same priorities then the world would run like a well-oiled machine, and that would be boring. 

   Now that I’ve clarified the housekeeping spectrum and given examples of each end and the middle, I would like to take this time to clear the good names of my moms (the original and the in-law), both of whom are also relaxed housekeepers.  By loose definition; their homes are as tidy as can be while still ensuring the comfort of their happy guests.  So I guess I inherited my housekeeping preference from my mom, who’s home has been known to be relatively uncluttered, comfortable, cozy in the winter, breezy in the summer, and altogether pleasant in every way.  I do clean my house, for those of you who are genuinely curious, and with a renewed vigor since recognizing my duties as a wife.  I like doing it, especially since it is abudantly clear to my poor (but polite) husband who still gives the impression of being unfazed by the fact that I can cook nothing but the most basic pastas.  I don’t see messes as soon as regular people do, but once I do they get a thorough cleaning, usually on days when Frank is out of the house (so I don’t make him uncomfortable with my scrubbing and sweeping and general fussing). 

   Interestingly enough, despite my relaxed approach to housekeeping, and my relatively relaxed upbringing (this is not including my mother’s technique of waiting until we children were settled in front of the tv to ask us to get up and vaccum and put things away), I do possess a handful of childhood obsessions, apparently.  For example, I cannot not clean under the wastebasket in the bathroom.  It is the subject of one of my more earnest mental debates.  One voice says, “Don’t bother cleaning all the way under the wastebasket this time, it doesn’t get very dirty back there.  Just clean that spot every other time.”  That voice is then squelched by my mother’s voice asking, “Did you clean behind the wastebasket?”  (As a child I would then be forced to go back and clean that area if the answer was no).  To this day I can’t not clean behind the wastebasket, if I am cleaning in the first place.  Its interesting how the things my parents pestered me about as a child are now critical in my own home.  

    One of the greatest crimes my husband can commit is to hold the fridge door open too long.  As a child in my parent’s home, I was to get a general idea of what I wanted from the fridge before I opened the door in the first place.  “Don’t hold the fridge door open!” was a common (and loud) utterance.  This all took place back east where (I recently joked with my brother) it didn’t matter if the fridge door was held open because it was just as cold outside the refrigerator as it was on the inside.  The lights were also a big deal.  My dad would go marching through the house from room to room swatting the light switches off and declaring loudly, “Unecessary lights!  Unecessary lights!”  Or I would be reading a book and suddenly hear a click and find myself in a pitch black room and almost panic before Dad’s voice reached me through the darkness, “Do you really need four bulbs to read by…?”  I usually picked up on his hint before he finished his sentence and I would reach over and turn on the tiny lamp by the couch, only to look over and see him standing by the livingroom light switch, drumming his fingers together and tilting his head imploringly.  

    Frank is learning that it is essential that he turn off lights when he leaves rooms.  What started as, “Hey hon, is there a reason the kitchen light is still on? …no no, I’ll get it, I’m closer.”  has been shortened to the attemptedly-cheery bellow as I watch him leave the room, “Kitchen light!” …and I assume if the direness of the situation doesn’t sink in, will turn into a simple hostile growl that he will be forced to interpret on his own.  Despite these quirks of mine, I think I make a decent housekeeper, and if I ever learn to cook I may turn out to be a pretty good wife overall.