I am the Cleaning Woman

The other day a dear friend-- and a devoted reader of this blog-- posted that workmen in her new house were amazed that she herself had come in to clean and do a bit of painting – they were even more impressed that she actually knew what she was doing. My friend’s new house isn’t in Southampton or upper Park Avenue; it’s in a quiet middle class Long Island community. So why should a woman cleaning her own house with some acumen be an anomaly, I wondered.

I didn’t grow up in a house with a cleaning woman but many of my friends parent’s used one.  My middle class neighborhood was populated mostly by second generation immigrants from Eastern Europe, Italy and Ireland.  Perhaps having a cleaning woman distinguished them from their working class upbringings and signaled success in the new world. Either way, having an outsider come in and touch your stuff just seemed weird to me – just the way plastic-covered furniture that was off-limits to unreasonable activities like sitting, seemed…well, unreasonable.  Oftentimes, my friends would say that we’d have to play at my house because their mother needed to clean up before the cleaning lady came. Again I was puzzled.

But those same friends were deliriously happy to visit my home. They were in their own personal nirvana in my little mess of an apartment. My mother, God bless her beautiful but somewhat disheveled soul – did not inherit the cleaning gene.  Making up kooky poems, sitting on the floor cross-legged inventing games, or doling out salty or sugary snacks was her forte.  No one wanted to leave – and sometimes they didn’t.  Two of my closest friends actually moved next door to us after a time – I think just to be even closer to residing in our messy two-bedroom apartment.  

I loved my mother and was deeply proud of her warmth and joie de vivre. But as I grew older, I became a bit ashamed of our place with too many dusty tchotchkes, Christmas tree tinsel still embedded in the carpet in February, and unmade beds. So I learned to clean. Turns out, it’s definitely in my genes. 

Over the years I learned many cleaning tricks and tips from my late father. Boy, he was a maniac when it came to a sponge. No corner was left untouched. I remember once when he came to visit me at my current apartment and asked what I used to mop up damp spots on the bathroom sink after one had washed their hands. I had to reply, “uh…nothing, I guess.” It had never occurred to me. Now I have a lovely blue microfiber cloth by the sink for this purpose and think of him every time I un-dampen the counter.  

I’ve also picked up a lot of knowledge about more natural ways to clean your home and have eschewed many store-bought chemical-laden cleaners in favor home spun  solutions. For example, I now clean my tub and toilet with baking soda and I am still stunned by how much more it sparkles. F.U. scrubbing bubbles, you go nothing on me! Vinegar and water has replaced Windex (how can you ever trust anything that blue?) You have to get used the sour smell but it dissipates quickly. And I know that no one is breathing in anything toxic.

Is cleaning fun? No, not always, but it is satisfying and more than that, it brings me closer to what is mine and what is important. Karl Marx, always a personal hero of mine, wrote much about alienation from our labor in the industrial age. He worried that assembly line workers would no longer care about their products the way artisans and craftsmen did when only given a small abstract portion of the entire work. That’s kind of what I feel about my home. It’s mine because I do know each and every corner, nook and cranny and just how grimy, dusty or newly clean it may be. I know what’s in my closets. I know what’s in my pantry and what’s hiding under the bed.  I see what I have and I appreciate it as well.

And, as I dust along the baseboards I remember when my husband and I painted them now six years ago. We sweated and cursed. We spilled and ran back and forth to the paint store, but we enjoyed the process – because we were turning his white-walled bachelor pad into a colorful new home for us to share.

I have many dear, busy friends who simply do not have the time, the energy (nor the desire) to clean their own homes and that’s fine.  In fact, I’ve always admired the faith it takes to turn that responsibility over to a relative stranger. There are other ways to connect to your environment and feel a deep appreciation for it.  My mom made our house a home by collecting way too many mementos, by hanging up every scrap of paper painted by me and my sister along with our poems and stories, by having cookie   jars and candy bowls everywhere and by leaving our Christmas tree up for months.  This is what made her feel happy and safe and so I forgive her from messiness. Just as she forgives me as I surreptitiously clean her bathroom when I visit.

 My mom (right) has always preferred to focus on coordinating her outfits rather than  ridding her home of pesky cobwebs.