What couldn't be easier? I live in three hundred fifty square feet of government subsidized bliss and I have to work hard at keeping it liveable. I have never had a house cleaner. This is a luxury I could never afford, besides which it has always felt a bit creepy. I had rather an old fashioned upbringing and I was raised to clean my own mess and not to wait for Mom or anyone else to do it for me. (Thanks Mom!)
I only saw house cleaners, or maids, on TV shows when I was a kid. Does anyone remember "Hazel", starring Shirley Booth? She was the mouthy post-menopausal house maid cleaning up after a typical American TV family. The idea seemed weird to me, almost exotic.
Throughout my life I have more or less cleaned up after myself. Sometimes I have been terrible at it. I always washed dishes within twenty-four hours, though, and I would always clean the bathroom as soon as the toilet looked so gross that I refused to put anything in it. I still managed to keep my place livable and guests always seemed comfortable and no one worried about taking anything home with them other than dinner and dessert leftovers.
My slack, lackadaisical housekeeping really began to change after I spent nine and a half months homeless. I also had years of practice during my thirteen years as a home support worker. Things I never thought of doing for myself I would gladly do to make my elderly or ill clients' homes clean, safe and comfortable and eventually my job taught me how to keep a cleaner and healthier home environment for myself.
While I was couch surfing I spent the majority of my time staying with my father four days a week in a small coastal community, and would commute to Vancouver for the balance of time and stay with various friends. My father had mixed feelings about my presence (I was in my early forties, he was seventy) and over the months his hostility manifested in some cruel and abusive treatment. As I was making plans to move I did everything in my power to not piss him off. Knowing that any visible trace of my presence might send him into conniption fits I did everything to remove any evidence that I was staying with him. If I had a glass of water I would immediately wash, dry and put it in the cupboard after. Likewise with dinner, lunch and breakfast dishes.
After I found housing I spent three years living in two different households, sharing quarters with very difficult, demanding and emotionally unwell people. I worked hard at staying invisible and at mopping away any evidence of my existence. I became super clean and super discreet. I was acting of out trauma.
When I finally found my own apartment, courtesy of BC Housing, for years I could still feel my father looking over my shoulder, coiling like a vindictive cobra to spring on me. I gradually became super clean. This did not occur overnight. At first I was simply washing and drying as quickly and possible my dishes. Then I began to clean my bathroom every morning immediately following my shower. Soon I was cleaning the rest of the apartment, following the bathroom, every day, and because it was every day there was so little mess or dirt that I always had everything cleaned, wiped and dusted in five minutes or less.
I no longer need to put aside one or two hours a week for house cleaning. It has become instinctive, a kind of natural extension of keeping my body clean. My three house cleaning sins are: I still don't vacuum enough; I hardly ever clean the fridge; and the clutter of papers and books that still piles up on every available surface. I have begun to tackle this. Right now I devote fifteen minutes every evening before turning in for the night to making sure there is no clutter: superfluous papers are filed or put in the recycling, books that are not about to be read, or not within the next two or three months, are promptly returned to the shelves. The apartment already looks much neater, better organized and more comfortable. This has already become habit and routine, like the other housecleaning.
Soon, I am going to begin wiping just a little bit of shelf in my fridge whenever I open the door. I might even start tonight. I have found over all that if I am going to do anything right that I have to approach it in small measurable steps and make it a daily habit. As long as I know where to draw the line I will probably never develop obsessive-compulsive disorder, but I am still watching myself very closely.
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