Cleaning Sucks
We just had a storm roll through, which prompted my neighbor, Shirtless Guy, to ring my doorbell. He wanted to return a bungee cord that flew off my travel trailer from the wind and into his back yard. Shirtless Guy usually likes to wear his chenille bathrobe outside year round, smoking cigarettes in front of his garage while gazing at his old black pick-up truck. He is not the kind of guy to be judgmental, not the person you wouldn’t want seeing the inside of your messy house on any given afternoon. But because I am a failed perfectionist I cared that he caught a glimpse inside. There was utter chaos in my living room, and I wanted to say “It doesn’t always look like this!” which is true. The more accurate statement is to say that it doesn’t always look like this, but it usually does.
I delude myself when I pretend that order and cleanliness are the norms from which my family occasionally strays. It’s not that we don’t clean—in fact we spend way too much time “cleaning” (me nagging my kids while they go Krav Maga on each other on the carpet and are asked to get back on task over a dozen times). The house gets sort-of presentable at least once a week for Sunday dinner and we pick up every day, but it is only an interval of seconds to minutes before there are sweatshirts in the hallway and crumbs under the chairs. The Hubs’ favorite thing to do is to eat out for the rest of the day after the kitchen gets detailed just so we can look at it again before it’s destroyed.
It’s All Their My My Parents’ Fault
I want to blame someone for the lack of order in my house. My instinct is to lash out at my kids, but then I realize that I suck almost as bad at cleaning and don’t set the best example. I am just as easily distracted as they are. If I find an interesting book while picking up a room I might stop to read it. If I’m supposed to put away laundry it might end up poured at the end of my bed for a couple of nights while I sleep above in the fetal position.
The truth is that I loathe household chores for the most part. My idea of a good day does not include any scrubbing, folding, vacuuming, and especially not dusting. I like to fancy myself as more of a “manager” than a “hands-on worker”, and my house is no exception. That hate of chores comes across to my kids, who also have also realized that cleaning is a waste of time and should be delegated to these new house robots I keep hearing about.
So who are the kids supposed to learn from? I certainly didn’t learn good habits from my parents. My dad’s idea of cleaning is to put items into boxes and pile them in front of every mode of egress in the house. Or taking a spare room and throwing everything in it and shutting the door—like the room version of a junk drawer.