Cleaning
Scrub a dub dub...well someone's gotta do it
Honestly, I don’t mind cleaning, well sometimes. I don’t mind scrubbing the kitchen , I even don’t mind cleaning the toilet ( as long as I wear gloves), but what I don’t like is dusting. Don’t ask, its weird, right? I have no patience to walk around the house with my swifter duster and just wipe things down. Because today that is all it really is.
In fact, I prefer to clean a toilet rather than to go and work in the garden or on the lawn. Even if I wear gardening gloves. I do not like outside dirt. Well, I don’t like inside dirt either. Hence, the cleaning.
Let me put it this way. For me to work outside mowing the lawn, or gardening, someone would have to be threatening to kill one of my children, and I would actually hesitate (well not really. Well maybe for a second or two. the boys are strong they could overpower their kidnappers. I would assume.) Truth is, I do not have a green thumb. If I touch it and it needs chlorophyll to live, I kill it. I have tried everything.
We bought prestarted tomato plants, put up the baskets, used special soil, and took very good care of them. They were supposed to be beef steak tomatoes. I got 1 tomato that looked like a cherry tomato. My other foray into gardening, was with one of those cedar tables that don’t need alot of watering. I planted prestarted herbs. Well, I bought my herbs at Costco that year. Listen, even the living basil you get at the market doesn’t last for me either. If there was an apocalypse, and I was in charge of our vegetables, we would simply starve to death. (We would also go vegan because there is no way we would be killing, and then butchering animals. To paraphrase Thoreau from On Walden Pond, “if modern man had to kill for their meat, they would all be vegetarians.”)
Meanwhile, dusting, truly, is a no brainer. No big deal really to put those little furry-rag-like things on the end of your telescopic swifter pole and glide away over all of your furniture, lamps, and blinds. It’s not like it was in them olden days where you had to take a rag, made probably out of some underwear that had passed its prime, spray said former panties/tighty-whities with some solvent to help pick up the left over “human dead skin cells, hair, pet dander, fibers, dirt, and other organic and inorganic materials” (I got that definition from google AI).
And I have to be honest, I don’t wax my good wood furniture either. (Sigh and I know my mother is rolling over in her grave. Well if she had one. My parents had in their Will that they were to be cremated so that is what I did for my them, even though they were Jewish. And no we didn’t keep their ashes. We had them scattered at sea, which we were not allowed to attend. Insurance issues and blahblahblahblah. Interesting conundrum right? Jewish law forbids cremation, but you are also supposed to honor thy mother and father. Well we chose my parents over some rabbi’s interpretation of Jewish law. And yes they say that without a body you cannot live again when the Messiah comes (and yes for you christians out there I understand it’s when he/she/they comes again). But, I think moshiach in such an age of glorious and heavenly peace on planet Earth, he/she/they can conjure up my parents’ bodies at the time. It’s not like your body doesn’t turn to dust in the end anyway.)
Yes, I have some really good 30 year old Ethan Allen furniture sitting in my dining room that hasn’t seen a rag with pledge or some wood oil on it in decades. So no, I am not a balabusta. That is the yiddishe version of a trad wife on steroids. Who ever knew my mother would always call her a balabusta. She was one of those women who would stand for 12 hours to make a part of a veal stock for her sauces, while keeping her house immaculate, working along side my father at their business, and raising us 3 girls. (She was also a self taught french chef. A little hobby of hers.) Who also never left the house without being properly dressed, including makeup and having her nails manicured. To this day I don’t know how she did it. (Well the getting dressed properly with makeup in the morning, in order to go to the store and run errands while getting everyone else out of the house at the same time part. The sheer act of trying to figure out what to wear in the morning other than athleisure is enough to send me over the edge. And no you won’t get me putting on makeup, that I brush my teeth and wash my face is sufficient. Honestly, the hair just goes up in a pony.)
Meanwhile, today it was time to deep clean the kitchen. Well it was supposed to happen last weekend, I do try to do it biweekly, but after this new pilates tower class I took, I simply could not summon the energy to scrub anything. (I’m going back to the pilates class tomorrow.) I had thought to wait to clean the kitchen tomorrow because today was a huge Costco run, and cardio day, but realized, I simply might not have the energy after class. So not wanting to chance having ecoli lurking somewhere in the bowels of my appliances, I dug in, and scrubbed down the kitchen.
Well not a complete scrub to be honest. I didn’t mop the walls this week. Honestly, I am actually going to wait until my younger son cooks dinner tonight, with all the splattering and whatnot he is going to produce. Even with a range top fan hood, you never know what gets on all the walls around the stove.
And yes, you read that correctly, I mop the walls. Again, its really easy to do with a swifter mop. (not the wetjet) You get those little wet pads, attach it to the end, and go up and down the wall. It really does a nice job of cleaning everything. We do it in the bathrooms, too. (But that’s more about the water stain build up from the shower, and not because people, ahem boys, can’t find the toilet). And no it’s not a left over psychological issue have-to-bleach-everything from COVID. I was mopping walls long before Corona was more than a beer with a lime wedge.
In fact, I remember discussing wall-mopping at work one day. You know in that off handed way you do around the water cooler, when you talk to women who have families and clean their own home. (And no I don’t know why men are never part of this discussion. In my home, the boys do the laundry, vacuum, clean the bathrooms, make their own beds, go food shopping, cook, run errands, and help hubby outside with the lawn care.)
The ladies really thought I was a little extra. But then one of my work friends came in on a Monday and told me she thought of me over the weekend because she mopped her kitchen walls. And yes, the kitchen did feel alot cleaner and smelled fresher.
See. I don’t like to dust, but I can start a cleaning trend all on my own.
IT IS DAY 540 OF THE HOSTAGES BEING STARVED AND HELD IN THE TERROR DUNGEONS OF GAZA 🎗️
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I hate cleaning, though I recognize it must be done. I love to cook, so my boyfriend does the dishes, though I have learned to wash glasses properly. He's a stickler on that one. I'm also no good as a gardener. I handle finances, write poetry, try to teach people that left and right make no sense as prisms for understanding society, and firmly believe Israel must declare sovereignty over Gaza, Judea and Samaria, flood those area with Jews, and lockdown the Palestinians who live there for fifty years. That's what you do to people who make you add it is day 540 of the hostages being held and starved in the terror dungeons of Gaza.
I enjoy your writing and flair for story telling very much.
I admire beautiful bountiful outdoor gardens, floral or vegetable. But, I don’t like dirt or bugs so I am with you, yard work is a pass when I can avoid it.