I cleaned the house this morning, a dusting, scrubbing, vacuuming, wet-mopping clean. Thorough. One of my favorite words. Thorough.
The baby next door screamed in protest when I ran the vacuum, but I persisted for a good hour. My vacuum has this quirk where it spits errant crumbs in its wake, forcing me to re-vacuum a floor at least 10 times before I’m content. And then, after I have coiled the cord onto its back, I’ll roll the vacuum to the storage room and see more flecks of dirt on the floor, and I’ll suppress the urge to rip my hair out. Because then I’d have to vacuum it up.
A few weeks ago, I was at the laundromat. There was an elderly woman with whom I developed a wordless rapport as we unloaded our dryers and folded clothes next to each other. As she loaded her stacks of clothes into a plastic bin affixed to a rolling cart, she looked at me and announced “I’m never changing my clothes again.”
It was so deadpan and unexpected that I laughed gaily. “If only that worked,” I said.
“Why wouldn’t it work?” she boomed. “If there’s no dirty clothes laying around, there’s no laundry to do.”
I laughed again. She was cute, if a bit gnarly. “I think I’d last about two days,” I bantered.
“Never changing my clothes again,” she repeated. She looked away from me, at an empty dryer. “When I die, these clothes will be someone else’s laundry.”
I laughed, but briefly and out of discomfort. I walked over to my last remaining dryer, where Mr. P’s pants tumbled and flopped around. I watched them intently. Life is short, and how much time do I devote to cleaning myself, my clothes, my dishes, my house? I resent these chores that intrude on life’s higher purposes. I know this urge to keep everything pristine.
