It’s officially summer. Spring got away from me, as did the cleaning. Aside from swapping the flannels for lighter sheets and shaking out two curtains, I’ve not done much. The house is still wearing winter. The dormant wood stove, surrounded by wood and wood dust, ash and fire tools. The bench in the laundry room, covered in socks and gloves, winter hats, an umbrella, a cooler. A seasonal mishmash. The winter coats still hang on their hooks, gathering dust.
Oh my god I need to clean. A friend is coming, a woman I haven’t seen in 40 years. Forty years! We were in college the last time I saw her, waitressing together, being young. We know almost nothing about one another’s adult selves, other than what we can glean from a short email thread. And now she’s coming! Pandemic midlife has compelled me to find old friends and now I will pay for it. Do I remember how to be social IRL?
There’s nothing like a pending visit to motivate a clean. As I scan my house, I see it through a stranger’s eyes. The stranger won’t see my good intentions, my brilliant plans. Only I can see the potential, the future grandeur of my shabby space. There isn’t currently a way to share the film that lives in my brain.
The room we call ‘the library’ (books are stacked everywhere) has a ratty, unused dresser squatting in the center. A table heaving with poster-sized kid art, old magazines, and an unused dust cloth. The piano has, inexplicably, legos strewn about. The kids are not kids, the art is old, the legos untouched for years.
The dining room is no longer for dining - we eat on the screen porch as soon as weather allows. The dining room is now the junk room. Mail, library books, a once used tablecloth that can’t be put away (once used) and isn’t dirty enough to wash. Wires that no one seems to know anything about. Matches and lip balm, napkins and keys. Receipts, packages, sunglasses, more socks. Probably another dust rag in there somewhere, whispering good intentions. This room is not for dining. It’s for raising my blood pressure.
The dust and the dirty windows are getting harder to ignore. Steven has been mumbling something about the grout in the shower for months now. He bought a special product (months ago) and laments daily his failure to tackle the job. We are drifting around in our chaos, blithely ignoring the detritus of our pandemic life. I look around every morning and can almost taste the delicious relief of tackling it. But, so far, the most productive thing I’ve done is make lists.
My daughter moved out recently and her room is now, basically, a closet. It’s where we push the unhung art and the unprocessed winter linens. More books, an old TV. A vacuum. Extra lamps and ripped pants. “Just put it in Lily’s room.” It’s the guest room now, but no guests stay in a plague. We don’t even open the curtains anymore to let the sun in. The cat sleeps there now, it’s her room. If we don’t reclaim it soon, I fear we are hoarder-bound.
I am often calmed by house work, cleaning can be relaxing. Emptying the dishwasher is sometimes meditative - putting each dish and spoon in its place feels right, like smoothing the fabric of my life. Straightening the bed in the morning straightens my brain just the tiniest bit.
Sweeping out the dust and dead bugs, clearing away the clutter is cathartic. I’m in love with the junk man - the hunched, gruff junk man brings me such joy. Junkman to the Rescue! is painted on the side of his rattletrap truck and we’ve filled it. Castoffs from a lifetime. Found stuff, abandoned stuff. Stuff no one in the world wants. I am in constant conversation with my guilt.
What is cleaning but making space? Space to breathe, to spread out. To fill up again.
We have little bursts of efficiency, followed by long fallow periods. Over the winter, I convinced Steven that we should clean our closets. We pulled everything out and purged, and we bought two little shelves for shoes and overflow nonsense that we can’t part with. He has a heavy box of keys there, rescued from his deceased father’s garage. I have a big orange acupressure mat that I never use and kind of hate. But maybe.
Today, on the kitchen counter: a hair tie, a broken meat fork, a flashlight, pens, incense(?), a jar of stale peanuts, toothpicks (used?), candy that everyone hates, an empty spice jar.
On the coffee table: headphones, lighters, a tuning fork, calipers(?), knives, tweezers, guitar picks, massage balls, remotes, outdated papers and magazines.
Our things suggest ridiculous people. Do we need it all?
I’m angling for a deep clean now. Windows, baseboards, forgotten cupboards. Hang the art that’s leaning in corners, find homes for the orphaned lamps. Assess the furniture, purge the unused and unloved. Swipe the ceiling cobwebs and clean the hideous 70s track lighting (while fantasizing about an upgrade).
What I’m doing instead is writing about the deep clean. Sitting in my unfinished office, not finishing it. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, my grandmother said.
I’ve got eleven days to find another road. Eleven days until a woman I no longer know will see my house. And me. I wish I could show her the movie in my head.
Happy Friday!
We’re not going to talk about the news, we’re going to clean and sing like a 2D princess in primary colors! Head in the technicolor sand!
Lisa
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson is a charming little book about home, family, death, and stuff. The author, who is “between eighty and one hundred,” is a kinder Kondo.
I’ve always been a sappy sucker for Disney princesses cleaning. I can’t explain it - it’s gross patriarchal conditioning but it’s so satisfying to watch magic make everything shine. Amy Adams did the trope proud in Enchanted, a film that I enjoyed possibly more than it warranted.
Years ago, I read the strong essay collection, Dirt: The Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House. I’m going to reread it (instead of cleaning). Simone de Beauvoir’s epigraph is perfect:
“Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled made clean, over and over, day after day.”
Keep writing. Screw the mop!