HOUSEKEEPING

 

          A very long time ago, when my mother was younger than I am now, I would wonder why she didn’t completely clean her house. It wasn’t that it needed vacuuming or dusting all over, it was more the minor little things that she overlooked. For instance, her bathroom was always clean, but the dust on the shelves was thick. Didn’t she see all that dust? Didn’t she care?

          Well, I’m older now than she was then and I’ve become a horrible housekeeper. I look back and remember what a terrific job I used to do in my youth. A visitor could arrive any old time and find a clean house empty of dog hair, dust, and miscellaneous crap. Back then I even washed my own windows, inside and out, in a single day several times a year. Now, I pay someone to wash them inside and out once a year.

          I think perhaps the pandemic had a bit to do with my housekeeping downfall. For two years or more, no one came to visit. Why vacuum or dust or deep clean when it’s just for me, myself and I. None of us mind a bit of dog hair, dust, paw prints, etc. Now, it’s pretty much become a habit.

          It’s probably not a habit I’m going to change any time soon. True, I do clean the bathroom every week (usually). True, I do take the little vacuum around the house and slurp up dog hair dust bunnies. True, I do the dishes and keep the kitchen clean, but there are days when the everything goes into the sink until there’s no more room. It’s also true I do laundry and change my bed on a regular basis. But the weekly vacuuming and dusting I performed back in the day no longer gets done. It gets done basically when I cannot stand it any longer…and my threshold for these chores has become amazingly high.

          Whenever I know I’m going to have company, as in more than one person, I do get off my bottom and pull out all the stops. Then, I vacuum, scrub, dust, clean and carry on until everything sparkles. That’s the way my house used to look even back when I worked full-time…I cleaned on the weekends. So far this year, I’ve held one event where more than one person came to visit. As you can probably figure out, that’s the only time I worked my ass off to make my house look terrific.

          In writing this blog post, I was reminded of Erma Bombeck, an American humorist very popular for her newspaper column which described suburban home life. It was syndicated from 1965 to 1996. Erma also published 15 books, and most became best sellers.

          Anyway, Erma Bombeck wrote a column entitled, “If I had my Life to Live Over.” I think she knew she was dying when she wrote it. In any case, I’ve always remembered, not necessarily lines, but thoughts/ideas from that column. It dealt with things like having people over regardless of how messy the house was so she could cherish that time with friends and family.

          I like to think of Erma when I don’t feel like cleaning. If company should arrive, well, I’ll just value the time we get to spend together regardless of the dust, dog hair, messiness. Time with friends or even just with me, myself and I, doing stuff we enjoy is far more important…am reminding me, myself and I of that daily, sometimes more than once.