Hate. It’s such an ugly word, isn’t it? With nasty connotations. The word is thrown around carelessly regarding lots of situations that certainly don’t call for the viciousness in which it’s used.
If you know me well, you know I’m careful about using the word hate. There are few things that warrant the ugliness it conjures up. But if you know me well, you also know that I seriously hate to clean.
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE clean. But I hate TO clean.
I was raised by one of the wisest women I’ve ever know. My mom never finished high school and to this day she often tells me she’s “so stupid.” She says that when she has trouble with Facebook which she loves so she can keep up with all the grands and great-grands. It’s true that she’s ignorant of technology (lucky her), and in a world polluted with technology, I can see how she has been brainwashed into thinking being technologically illiterate equates to stupidity. It doesn’t though, and when it comes to practical knowledge and wisdom, Mom’s got it in spades.
Some women, my mom for example, are natural born mothers. She loved being a mom, loved nurturing us, training us to be self-sufficient, celebrating our successes, teaching us to accept the lessons in our failures, and just showing us how to exist successfully in a world before it was polluted by technology. But in addition to being a full-time mom, in the 1960s and beyond (for nearly 40 years), mom also worked part-time in the evenings as a supper-club waitress to help feed and clothe the 6 kids she and dad created.
I was the oldest of the 6 and from early on, as was typical of larger families back then, the older kids were expected to do chores to help keep a household of 8 functioning smoothly. I learned to help with all the things mom did to manage our household.
I never looked forward to Saturdays as a kid. Every Saturday was cleaning day at our house. My sister, Patti, just 13 months younger, and I were tasked with dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing toilets and bathtubs, and washing floors on our hands and knees. Mom was a good teacher, and she was meticulous about keeping a clean house, so Patti and I learned to clean well. I also learned how much I hate to clean. Cleaning is hard work, a very physical activity. Even as a child I’ve enjoyed activities that are much more cerebral in nature. I’m not particularly agile or coordinated, and to be honest, I don’t cultivate any ability I might have.
Cleaning is also a discouraging activity. No matter how well you do it, and what you accomplish, you have to do it again, over and over and over.
I’ve been blessed. As a responsible, educated adult, I earned enough money (at cerebral work) to be able to pay someone else to clean for me and Randy. Believe it or not, there are actually people who enjoy cleaning. Some of them choose to make their living doing it. Over the years it brought me great satisfaction to 1) work a few extra hours at my job to earn enough money to 2) pay someone who enjoys cleaning to support their family. Win-Win, right? Consequently, I’ve had excellent housekeepers for the last 30-35 years, some of whom also became great friends.
Now I’m retired and no longer work for money, which I need to provide work for someone else. And I have all this clock time to fill, 7 days a week. It doesn’t make sense to pay someone else to clean for us. In fact, it feels very much like shirking my marital partnership responsibilities.
Laughingly, I remember from the old days, kind of, how to clean. Surely, I thought, there have to be new techniques, tools, and methods that make cleaning easier or faster or less hateful in my mind. So I did what every tech savvy American does now-a-days, I searched YouTube for how to clean more efficiently. And you know what? There’s a treasure trove of good information out there! After less than an hour watching YouTube videos, I felt like I could be VERY efficient at cleaning bathrooms. And I am.
It took about 4 cleaning sessions before I got all the kinks out of the methodology for me. And now I don’t really HATE it anymore. I can’t say that I’m even close to liking to clean, but I do it. There are tips and tricks I learned from YouTube that mom never taught me that make it tolerable, if not particularly pleasant. And I like how everything looks and smells right after I spend (less than I imagined) time cleaning bathrooms.
I’d still rather spend my time reading but life is about choices, after all. And I choose living in a clean house even if I, finally, must do it myself.
P.S. That Jimmy Buffet book I read, A Salty Piece of Land, was better than I expected. The tale was outlandish, and dragged on a bit, but the guy has quite an imagination. If you have nothing else to do and don’t care that you get no redeeming value out of the time spent reading it, it’s a wild ride for anyone who likes to live vicariously through books. Especially if you love the tropics, boats, planes, and happy endings and aren’t offended by salty language, a bit of casual sex, and getting high.
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