January 26, 2014 - Cleaner
It didn’t hurt to walk into our home after our wee wintry walk this morning. I mean that sincerely – normally our entrance area is covered in a layer of grit. You would definitely want to go directly from snowboots into thick-soled slippers. Why do we have a carpet of rocks, salt and sand? Well, because Laur and I never seem to get around to cleaning.
There is a bit of history behind this. When we “only” had three kids, I did the cleaning. Sadly (but not too sadly,) my back got really sore when I was expectant with our fourth, so Laur took over. Saturday mornings were noisy and cranky, but I escaped it by doing the banking and grocery shopping. And for whatever reason, even when our fourth was well into school, this pattern continued. Life was good – at least for me.
One month a few years ago, two things happened – our mortgage got paid off and Laurence served notice that a) he was tired of cleaning and b) he thought the kids still at home should do it. “B” was not a reliable or long-term solution. Hmm… We could now afford to hire out the cleaning – but finding a cleaner who could stand working for us would be quite another thing. We had three dogs and a countless number of cats. Laurence and I are clutter-bugs and “pilers” – enough to drive most any custodian completely mad.
Thankfully a friend let us know about a cleaner who LOVED cats and didn’t mind dogs. More importantly she was willing to shovel through our hovel without expecting it to stay clean and tidy for long. We called her Kim the Kosmic Kleaner and she assured us, “I like coming here. I can see a real difference when I’m done.” So could we!!!
Nothing stays the same. Our kids moved away. Our dogs and many of our cats died of old age. Our remaining kitties went to live with a friend on a hobby farm while we took advantage of our extra income (no mortgage) and Laur’s sabbatical - and we spent the winter of 2013 in Arizona. We didn’t need our house cleaned while we were away and we naively assumed that we would do the cleaning when we returned. I mean, we managed to swab out our trailer – couldn’t we “do” our house?
It turns out we couldn’t – or at least we didn’t. Laur and I are second borns and are always waiting for someone else to pick up the slack, or in this case – the vacuum cleaner. It didn’t happen. I won’t say how many weeks (or months) it took us to finally twig that if we didn’t do something, nothing would happen. We picked a Saturday morning – I vacuumed and Laur cleaned the bathrooms and washed some floors. Ta da!
But then came the big surprise. After a few weeks (or months) the house started getting dirty again. How could this happen? We were very baffled. We went through all the stages of grief and still the house didn’t clean itself. So yesterday morning, we both put in an hour and a half of household drudgery. I still wouldn’t recommend eating off the floor here, but at least we can walk around in sock feet without getting a shard of something stuck in our feet.
When we move to St. Catharines in 17 months, I think we should seriously look at buying a self-cleaning house. It does exist, more-or-less, and Francis Gabe has the patent for it. See
http://blip.tv/weird-america/weird-america-francis-gabe-s-self-cleaning-house-129256 and http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/garden/son-of-carwash-the-self-cleaning-house.html
Mind you, her husband Bert and she divorced at about the same time she came up with this idea. He moved out to a trailer on their property. Maybe both Laur and I should just ditch the whole have-a-house idea in its entirety and drag our AZ trailer to Ontario. A lot cheaper than divorce and much easier to clean.
There is a bit of history behind this. When we “only” had three kids, I did the cleaning. Sadly (but not too sadly,) my back got really sore when I was expectant with our fourth, so Laur took over. Saturday mornings were noisy and cranky, but I escaped it by doing the banking and grocery shopping. And for whatever reason, even when our fourth was well into school, this pattern continued. Life was good – at least for me.
One month a few years ago, two things happened – our mortgage got paid off and Laurence served notice that a) he was tired of cleaning and b) he thought the kids still at home should do it. “B” was not a reliable or long-term solution. Hmm… We could now afford to hire out the cleaning – but finding a cleaner who could stand working for us would be quite another thing. We had three dogs and a countless number of cats. Laurence and I are clutter-bugs and “pilers” – enough to drive most any custodian completely mad.
Thankfully a friend let us know about a cleaner who LOVED cats and didn’t mind dogs. More importantly she was willing to shovel through our hovel without expecting it to stay clean and tidy for long. We called her Kim the Kosmic Kleaner and she assured us, “I like coming here. I can see a real difference when I’m done.” So could we!!!
Nothing stays the same. Our kids moved away. Our dogs and many of our cats died of old age. Our remaining kitties went to live with a friend on a hobby farm while we took advantage of our extra income (no mortgage) and Laur’s sabbatical - and we spent the winter of 2013 in Arizona. We didn’t need our house cleaned while we were away and we naively assumed that we would do the cleaning when we returned. I mean, we managed to swab out our trailer – couldn’t we “do” our house?
It turns out we couldn’t – or at least we didn’t. Laur and I are second borns and are always waiting for someone else to pick up the slack, or in this case – the vacuum cleaner. It didn’t happen. I won’t say how many weeks (or months) it took us to finally twig that if we didn’t do something, nothing would happen. We picked a Saturday morning – I vacuumed and Laur cleaned the bathrooms and washed some floors. Ta da!
But then came the big surprise. After a few weeks (or months) the house started getting dirty again. How could this happen? We were very baffled. We went through all the stages of grief and still the house didn’t clean itself. So yesterday morning, we both put in an hour and a half of household drudgery. I still wouldn’t recommend eating off the floor here, but at least we can walk around in sock feet without getting a shard of something stuck in our feet.
When we move to St. Catharines in 17 months, I think we should seriously look at buying a self-cleaning house. It does exist, more-or-less, and Francis Gabe has the patent for it. See
http://blip.tv/weird-america/weird-america-francis-gabe-s-self-cleaning-house-129256 and http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/garden/son-of-carwash-the-self-cleaning-house.html
Mind you, her husband Bert and she divorced at about the same time she came up with this idea. He moved out to a trailer on their property. Maybe both Laur and I should just ditch the whole have-a-house idea in its entirety and drag our AZ trailer to Ontario. A lot cheaper than divorce and much easier to clean.