|
2007-10-05 05:43:21 ET In efforts to try to tame the chaos that has become our apartment- no, wait. Strike that. Revers it: In efforts to recreate normalcy in an apartment that has become chaotic, I scrubbed the shit out of the bathroom last night, and I mean that quite literally. I actually scrubbed the shit out of our toilet bowl. Since we don't own a toilet bowl brush (yet, working on that. I want to get the skull one with the bone handle, and I know just where I can buy one), I had to flush, scrub, flush scrub, always keeping fresh water flowing so bleaching of my already chemically dried hands wouldn't be necessary- Don't worry. I made sure to scrub the toilet last so as to avoid streaking germs across the rest of the bathroom. Then I threw the sponge away. YAY! Go me for sanitation! Now, all I need is an over-the-toilet bookshelf, and all will be sound and good in the world. Next project is the hallway, which is pretty easy in comparison, since it has no furniture, and no other surface, aside from the floor, that needs to be cleaned. After that, it's the living room, which Waylon will likely help me with. My mother has passed down two things, which I think are very important about cleaning: First, just because you're a woman doesn't mean the cleaning has to be done exclusively by you, despite what our commercials still tell you, for the most part- except Mr. Clean. Mr. Clean is macho enough for a man (she didn't teach me that, though. I figured that one our last time I watched TV for a good amount of time). She also inadvertently passed down her extreme adversity to doing chores. She very obviously hated cleaning while teaching me, and so we fought the whole time, and I learned to hate it, too. Second: If you're going to do it, you might as well be thorough about it so you don't have to bother again for a while. Which means moving things and sweeping/dusting under them; Finding a place for everything to live, not just throwing it on your bed (we had lots of fights about this when I was growing up); and basically getting everything as spotless as possible. The trick I need to learn is how to keep things spotless the rest of the time. How to do little things every day so that our apartment doesn't build up into the chaotic reality it so easily becomes. In order to do this, I need to first remind myself that I'm not cleaning because I'm a woman, I'm cleaning because I want a clean house. Waylon does most of the cleaning and stuff right now, so it's obviously not a feminism issue...he just isn't very thorough about it, which incites my obsession about getting it perfect if you're going to do it at all. Secondly, I need to be ok with doing things in little bits. The whole reason I hate cleaning is because it becomes this huge production- as I mention above, it always has, since I was growing up. We would have the day planned out in advance, so it loomed over us. Then we would fight and argue throughout the entire thing. The main lesson I need to learn is that it's alright to just do a corner of the living room, for example. It's the biggest room in our apartment, so unless I take the entire day, I can't expect myself to be able to clean the whole thing perfectly in one morning/evening, because it's just too much with the other responsibilities I have to Waylon as a partner, to Ashby as her "mom," and to myself to get the things done I need to do for me (i.e. writing, reading, learning new makeup tricks, etc). So my new goal is to get the apartment sparkling one little piece at a time, so when it's time for a "big clean" it can be done of an evening, as opposed to a whole day of overwhelming and exhausting intense cleanathon craziness. Step one: Bagel with creamy creamy cream cheese. :] |
