Here’s how I clean my house.
I have miles of new laminate floors. They are like a sea of fiendish polished wood, rolling with wads of and long fat wisps of gray cat hair, dried weed stems and yellow stickers, grit and dirt. Blotches and blobs of dried spills are dotted everywhere.
I am overwhelmed by my floors.
Here’s my method.
Dust everything high up. Think about cleaning all the imposing dark granite counter tops in the kitchen but that can wait. Maybe for a month.
Get out the broom and sweep all the base boards and the sides of all the rooms and into the corners.
Step barefooted onto a sharp dog bone. Scream.
Go and lie down.
Sweep all the floors.
Check my email.
Wide sweep all the floors with a big commercial duster.
Moan long and loudly.
Bill opens the door from his adjoining studio and says, “OK that’s enough cleaning. I hate to see you suffer like this. I told you this last week.”
Ignore him.
Wander outside to the patio and lie exhausted in the ratty chaise lounge and get some sun.
Vac the floors.
Get myself wound up in the vacuum cleaner cord, step on another pointed dog bone, scream and fall to the floor.
Moan.
Look around and say, “I just can’t do this. This is too much for me.”
Vacuum some more. Vacuum up the white tassels on a small oriental rug. The vacuum cleaner coughs and quits.
Moan and cry some more.
Bill opens the door from his studio and comes into my great room.
“Why don’t you hire some help?” he says. “You look terrible. You can do lots of things very well but you’re not good at this. I mean it, give it up. You’ve been moaning for hours. You’re losing the whole day.”
I tell him to leave me alone.
Get down on my hands and knees with a small, wet yellow sponge and clean the base boards by hand.
Sign heavily and sit against the wall for awhile.
Wet the sponge again and wipe and clean all around the outside of the rooms and into all the cracks and corners. Forget to keep a bucket of water at hand so make many trips to the sink to pull all the hair and grit and dirt off the sponge and re-wet it.
Lean my forehead on the kitchen counter.
Look around at all the stains on the floors. Think about getting out a mop. But first, get down on my knees and scrape off all the unidentified stuff that is three-D.
Get out the wet mop.
It’s new and I can’t get the handle to expand or the sponge to release. I can’t even get all the cellophane off the sponge!
Throw the mop against the dining-room table.
Go into my bedroom and rip the sheets and pillow cases off the bed and the pillows. Carry the pillows outside and put them in the sun.
Sling the brown feather blanket over the pool fence. Sling it too far and part of it drops into the pool water.
I say a bad word.
Go inside and lie down on the bed.
Get up reluctantly and take the dirty sheets and pillow cases and put them in the washer.
Check my email.
Wander outside.
Come inside.
Try and turn the mattress on the bed. Can’t do it. It’s too heavy for me.
Look through some of the tall, crooked piles of books that I have stacked by my bed.
Tip the small bedside table over to see if it still has black widows on the underside.
There is a tremendous racket as all the vitamin bottles and books and pens and nail clippers and all the stuff of life that is stored inside, rockets to the back of the table.
The bedside table is too heavy for me to hold at tilt position and it falls hard on it’s back. I go with it.
Bill appears in the doorway.
He has his cell phone camera. He’s very amused as he takes my picture.
I decide Bill is right. I can do many things well but there are a few things that I do abnormally badly. Housekeeping is one of them.
And then there is my cooking.
When I was in college, I had my two younger brothers visit me at my apartment. I made them dinner.
Years later we are talking about that evening when my brothers say, ‘You made the best pizza we ever ate!”
I’m puzzled. “I never made you pizza.”
“Oh, yes you did,” my brother Jim says, “Art and I agreed it was the best pizza we’d ever had.”
Suddenly, I remember.
“That wasn’t pizza!” I yell. “That was meat-loaf!”
Sometimes you just gotta’ say ‘Uncle’ about some things in life and concentrate on where you shine.
Tomorrow, I’m seriously looking for someone who shines at cleaning houses. And, when I find her, I will pay her well, and fill her arms with lilies and compliment her lavishly, but I will not make her meat-loaf or even attempt to make her lunch. I won’t want to lose her.
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THE COMMENT SECTION IS NOW OPEN
Love the way you clean house and I espically like the check the email method of stalling it. Sounds good to me. Can’t wait to hear how you grocery shop!
Yep, I was going to agree with Bill, too, but in a subtle kind of way that hopefully would not have annoyed you. Maybe you can get a MAN to clean for you? Doesn’t have to be a lady! And maybe he can cook for you, too? Although ladies are more fun anyway…
Black widows under your bedstand, eep!
Anyway, it sounded really awful… I am not skilled at cooking or cleaning either. So I eat a lot of raw food, and my house is almost always terribly messy. One must enjoy punishment to force oneself to do such things in spite! Yes, I think you somehow enjoyed it. And now you’re done enjoying it and ready to enjoy someone else doing it for you! yay!
And heckter, if the “pizza” was really that good, just make meatloaf and call it pizza!
That’s the secret to life. We try to do one thing but end up doing another. Just pretend we were going for the other thing all along and are great at it. It needn’t be habitual, but it’s useful from time to time. It was the best pizza they’d ever had!
Good blog. Had to hoot about Bill and his cell camera. Post the picture.
Can I move in with you, too? I’ll live in a trailer on the property with a goat, lots of books, and study and write songs and have zero income. We’ll start a weird collective. Anyway, you won’t see me. I sleep a lot.
Thanks for the laugh! Sometimes when I clean I move the clutter from room to room – only to turn around and realize I had created a bigger mess! Cheers to all the Cleaning Queens in the world!!!
Ooh you made me tired as I was feeling you all the way thru this,lol. Sounds like some of my cleaning adventures when I’m really too tired to do it, tired of looking at it and try to force it anyway instead of listening to my body and taking a nap. LOL. You might try buying one of those auto disc looking vacuum cleaners that you just turn on and it vacuums for ya…I hear they work pretty good. Also I bought a couple of air filter machines from Sharper Image. They’re the kind you don’t have to replace the filter and they have GP, germicidal protection which will filter out mold, spores and I think it takes in pet hair. Pricey, but well worth it.
I totally relate. Especially hate the mopping part. I went years without mopping at my last house. Kept telling myself that I was going to replace the flooring anyway, so why bother mopping? One tip though, you need to learn to run your foot along the baseboards periodically to pick up dog and cat hair. This can be done with a shoe on or barefoot and can forestall having to sweep for weeks, perhaps months. I now live in a smaller house. Many fewer square feet to attend to. Much better, but have lived here 5 months and have only swept. No mopping yet. Only damp paper towels for big messes. As Niell Young says, a man needs a maid. A woman can need a maid too.
You are too cute. How do you keep all the details in your head throughout the day to be able to write them down later? I suspect you also use that in-between sweeping!
Have a great weekend. Prescription: No cleaning!
Hilarious! Housecleaning is my least favourite activity, so your story really hit home and I just cracked up laughing; if I feel sorry for myself next time I have to clean house, I will just remember your experiences and smile
I kept blaming the kids for my house being a mess. Then they moved out. Now it is just my husband, the cat and me. The house is still a mess. I want to hire a cleaning service, but I’d be cleaning the house before they came…no way can I let strangers see my house how it really is!
My only tip is to invite company over to the house once a month.
Venus, I love you! I must tell you how much I appreciate your blogs, you, your life, and your willingness to share! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I look forward to every blog! Your blogs are the treat of my day! I work for a state agency, hump, so I print the blog and read it outside when I take a break. You rarely fail to make me laugh out loud! I want to see the photos on Bill’s phone! *Smile! You are a riot and earthy! Thank you! You help me to remember that the mundane goes with the exciting! I have read every one of your blogs and listened to all of your shows on Hay House! I am re-listening to them now, since I am all caught up. Guess I will be re-listening a lot more, since your shows will be fewer now. Bummer! Biggest of hugs to you and THANK YOU FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I rented a room from a guy who hired cleaning people. Their first day, they did a whole house cleaning and the toxic cleaning supply fumes almost killed me. And they dragged it out for a whole day on my day off and it was too cold to open the windows comfortably. Venus, before you hire people, go to the health food store and sniff cleaning products then buy ones for them to use that don’t make you faint or gag. Good luck!
Venus (and friends) we have a wonderful “pet” at our house that we call Spot. He is a roomba vacuum cleaner. If you can remember to empty Spot’s dirt cup on occasion, he will do the work for you. It’s a great incentive to make my kids pick up their toys, because if they don’t get up all the pieces “Spot will eat it.”
We also have a robotic cat litter box, LOL!
**note that I make no money from these endorsements.**
Hi, Venus, I feel your pain. Shake hands with another person who doesn’t get along with housework. I’ve found a kindred spirit.
If I were you I’d get Bill to take the spiders outside. I always telepathically ask the spiders not to come in. Not sure if it works.
It’s so much fun reading your blog–thanks!
(I hope this didn’t post twice; the first one went blank so I wrote it again).
Oh, wow, Venus, I laughed so hard, I peed my pants!! I can also relate!! I just love your blogs, they brighten my day!
Barton
I’m not a natural for house cleaning too, but having had ME for a few years have picked up a few tips – Venus, try a clean dry new mop for picking up the dust and pet hair. It works wonders, afterwards you can pick up the hairs off the mop or just shake the mop outside and have another go. It is quick, and really easy. Then you can mop if you like. The floors get all shiny with this, also after mopping with a wet mop you can mop it dry with another dry new clean mop which also picks up any left over grime. You can do really big areas quickly….