March 7, 2018 - 72% of people say they sleep better in a clean house. . .

. . was today’s newsflash in the morning paper.

Clean house?  What is that?  How can you keep a house clean when you actually live in it?  There are the three meals a day to prepare, the bathroom to use and eventually clean, the kitchen to clutter up with in-coming groceries and clean before and after food preparation. Also, the common rooms quickly clutter with newspapers and mail, and the floors are tracked with mud on these rainy days.  Then, even if you don’t have a hobby that messes the house up, you have the inevitable dust on all surfaces, and the windows become dirty from the outside weather and the inside breathing, and if you have a cat and dog, suddenly a household of two increases to four mess makers.

For the life of me, I have never seen every single room in my house pristine at the same time. I would love to see the perfection that you see in the glossy magazines - House Beautiful or Architectural Digest – does anyone actually live in those houses.  It is the phony ideal that we housekeepers have been sold and I am slowly coming to the conclusion it is out of my reach and always has been.

The kitchen is the life center of a house they say, life – yes,  half your life is spent chopping and peeling and stirring and pulling out many pots and pans and later the dishes and forks and knives and eventually sit down to a gourmet respite?  What comfort does that meal give you when you have to wash the items pulled from the multiple cupboards and, especially when we eat with regularity – breakfast, lunch and dinner?  You clean that room three times a day – or even more if you happen to make a snack. And, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the used provisions magically re-appeared in the pantry without my assistance?

Does the bathroom stay pristine?  NO, you have done the vanity sinks, the toilet, and the floor.  Now the shower stall, it looks lovely at this fleeting moment – shining back at you, yet, you now need to take a shower to clean the sweat and dirt off yourself from the half-day of house cleaning.

So, the bed is made - it will become unmade as soon as you slip into it to sleep and you repeat making it every day of your life. Occasionally, at intervals to your standards, you have to take off the comforters and blankets and fold them and set them aside so that you can strip the sheets from the bed in order to launder and remake the bed.

That of course, leads us to the laundry.  When was the last time anyone ever accomplished neatly folding a fitted bottom sheet into something of a concise shape to fit into a linen closet or cabinet?

I need a magical laundry hamper that somehow takes the dirty laundry to the washer. I need a washer that I don’t have to listen for the timer to prompt me to get up and flop the wet clothes into the dryer.  Why haven’t they invented the washer that also dries?  And, a really good inventor would include cleaning the lint filter and hanging or folding the clothes because I can’t just dump the warm-from-the-dryer laundry somewhere and by magic it folds itself or hangs itself and gets all put away in the correct place to be found again when wanted.

Then there is the mud and muck we track in from the many back and forth trips to the garden where we like to sit out and enjoy the weather or where I play in the dirt. Why can’t the floor magically sweep and mop itself?

I haven’t even mentioned the taking out of the trash, or the paying of bills – two more items that need doing every few days.

Yes, 72 percent of the people sleep better in a clean house.  Does that mean they are so exhausted from cleaning that they sleep better because they are exhausted? The research neglected to give us a percentage of people who feel they actually accomplish the goal of a clean house.  That is the flipside of that news bulletin.  Does that headline mean that 28 percent know it is almost impossible and only do enough cleaning for their health and safety?  I wonder when we will see those scientific findings in the news.

Me, I think today, I will draw a few heart shapes in the dust on my delft shelf conveying love to myself and then go out in the sunshine and enjoy springtime. 

The housework will be there – it never ends, but springtime is fleeting.

I don’t dare say

good housekeeping to you,

I’ll say instead – nice weather to you.