If there is one habit I dont mind inheriting from my mother in law it is the idea of Cleaning Day. I have always considered myself to be tidy but never overly fixated on cleaning. When the kitchen counter was crumby I would wipe it up. When the tub started to look grimy I would scrub it. But not usually all in one day because I just never felt like I had the time for that. Cleaning was something I did while the baby was napping or out with Daddy. I read an article while I was pregnant that said something to the effect of, “In 20 years you aren’t going to remember if there were dishes in the sink or toys on the floor. You’re going to remember the time you spent with your child.” And that struck a chord with me. So I vowed to be tidy but to never obsess over the little stuff. And that was easier in our old house, when it was just the three of us and I only had 1500 square feet to deal with.
But this woman? A cleaning machine. I’m not even kidding. Somehow she manages not to come off as a freak about it (perhaps because the deep clean is limited to one day a week and usually carried out when no one else is home) but her house is always immaculate. The stainless steel sink – the kind that easily accumulates fingerprints and water marks? Spotless. She wipes it down with a soft, dry towel 10 times a day. There are no nicks in the walls, no ugly switchplates, no snotty spots on the french doors where the dogs smoosh their noses while they wait to be let out into the yard. There are no errant hairs in the corners of the bathrooms, no wadded up balls of lint on top of the dryer. I asked her recently why she is so meticulous and if she always has been. Her answer was simple: she grew up in a house with 10 (yep, t-e-n) brothers and sisters and so it was never perfect or well maintained. There just wasn’t the money or the time to do it. And she was embarrassed, not by her family of course but by the reality of life with that many people coming and going and dragging their messes behind them. So her vow was to create a home where neither she nor her kids ever had to be embarrassed. And she has.
So now I clean every Thursday (“That way you have the whole weekend free to do better things,” as she says) and I wipe the sink and I am very careful not to touch any part of the refrigerator door except for the handle. I don’t know how she ever managed to keep up with it on her own in this house, which is more than twice the size of our old rental - if it was all on me I would totally hire a cleaning service – it’s just too big. Too much floor, too many surfaces, too many rooms. And the yard? Equally enormous, by suburban standards anyway. A half an acre in front and a half an acre in back, plus all the little walkways and gardens right up next to the house itself. The grass is always mowed, the shrubs are always even, there are always, always, always fragrant yellow and orange and red roses for cutting and arranging in little vases around the house. It’s a nice way to live and nicer that neither one of us has to do it all. There is a freedom in the way we share the responsibilities and the way we can share the pride when the result is so lovely.
