I have come to believe, as I grow to maturity, that house cleaning is something that is less important to each generation. I find that rather ironic, since people with dirt floors presumably had a harder time keeping up with the cleaning than those of us with hardwoods and carpeting. But I can't lie - I wouldn't bet against the dirt floor being cleaner than my living room wall to wall.
It amuses me to hear my mother sigh occasionally, and lament that her mother was so much better of a housekeeper than she is. Naturally, my mother, a paragon of virtues if ever there was one, is a far more diligent housekeeper than I ever have been or could be. My recollection, from growing up with her, is that she spent her entire life cleaning and cooking, and had no fun whatsoever.
I suspect she would disagree with that characterization, since she occasionally remarks that she cannot keep up with the housework now, and she lives alone. Surely the house was messier than I remember it, back when I was young.
I know one thing for sure, I haven't got a chance of keeping up with two kids, a multitude of friends, two dogs, a cat and the messiest pets of all, a rabbit and a bird. You have to wonder if making a mess is their way of getting back at us for confining them to a lifetime of living in a cage.
In all fairness, I should probably mention that my own mother had to cope with two kids, a multitude of friends, two dogs in the house, a cat, and a bird. Um, ya, moving on....
Every so often, I get inspired to clean up the house, and I will go into a frenzy of efficiency, washing and vacuuming and dusting and sweeping, until we scarcely recognize the place. This is soon replaced by an exhausted me, laid out on the sofa, complaining bitterly about the futility of it all, and snacking on chocolate.
I have identified one major source of my problem to be my beloved, but rather neatness challenged, daughter. She has no real love of a clean house, and mess does not seem to disturb her, as long as it isn't in her own room, which she keeps immaculate. This miracle is primarily achieved by moving everything that would clutter up her room into some other room in the house, thereby foisting her disarray onto everyone else.
I can't argue with the success of her strategy - her room is, in fact, the neatest spot in the house by a long ways. On the other hand, it does create quite the challenge for the rest of us keeping things neat and put away when they are located everywhere other than where they belong.
It will be most interesting to see what happens next fall, when my lovely little girl will leave home and I will have the house all to myself. [And the aforementioned two dogs, cat, bird, and rabbit, of course.] I wonder, will I find myself with a neat space all the time? Will it be much easier to keep up with the cleaning, and the vacuuming, and the other housework that I currently find so abhorrent?
An amusing anecdote from my own past says perhaps it will be, just a little. When I went away to college, my own mother, a single mom since my father's death a few years earlier, lived alone for the first time in her life. She was sad, and missed me greatly [she did, she told me so,] especially during the first few months of adjustment.
Evidently, she even started to miss my mess. I know this, because she informed me, in one of the sweeter letters I've ever received, that she actually went to my room to get some of my things, then laid them around the house to remind her of me. That, my friends, is when you know you are truly loved.
I have a hard time imagining myself doing that - I have complained about the mess for approximately 17 years now. But perhaps, in another goofy twist of fate, I too, will find myself laying about little reminders of the life I once led and didn't adequately appreciate until it was over. You never know. Quite often the impossible becomes possible, with the right incentive. And loneliness is powerful incentive.
My grandmother, mother of six, farm wife, and obviously a hard worker, [and, I'm told, one of the sweetest people who ever walked the earth, although I never met her, since she died long before I was born,] kept her house and children in excellent order most of the time. But once a year, in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, she exceeded even her usual high standards. The harbinger of change was when she took down every curtain in the house right after Thanksgiving, a signal that it was time for the annual fall housecleaning.
Now, when I say cleaning, I mean just that - she Cleaned. She washed floors. She flipped mattresses. She washed the mop boards, washed the curtains, washed all the bedding and the tablecloths and everything else in the house that didn't move, along with quite a bit of it that did. By Christmas Eve, the house was spotless, spic and span down to the last doorknob and floor plank, and then she would reconstruct the house again in time for the festivities.
My mother has a particularly fond memory of her mother pulling a brand new tablecloth from the package, the final touch in refreshing their home for the sacred celebration. She remembers helping her mother with the cleaning and preparations, and also the fun of seeing everything put back into place, everything old and yet once again new, their home in readiness for the new year to come.
My mom made a valiant effort for many years to follow the same tradition, but somewhere along the line, she learned some short cuts. I do recollect, quite clearly, her stretcher frame set up in the dining room, with the freshly washed curtains stretched out on it to dry, so they wouldn't shrink. But I don't recall them being off the windows for a month, so I'm pretty sure they got replaced well before Christmas Eve.
Come to think of it, I haven't seen that stretcher frame in years.
My own Thanksgiving traditions have little to do with cleaning, although they do involve a massive effort on my part. After I get the turkey into the oven, I get my Christmas cards in the mail. [I set a rule for myself many years ago which has served me well - I will not allow myself to put up a single Christmas decoration until the cards have been mailed.] Once the cards are in the mail, and driving to the post office to throw them into the box on Thanksgiving Day is a cherished tradition in my family, I can heave a sigh of relief, and go home to decorate for the holiday season looming over me.
There is no time for cleaning, it is a race to the finish line as we all frantically throw our decorations in their traditional place, and then spend the rest of the month tearing around to open houses and office parties. We go on a spree of gift buying that determines whether most retail stores will end the year in the black or the red, and if they will survive for another year. Not to mention our own financial status, but we are not supposed to worry now about how we can pay for it all later, because shopping is the American Way to prosperity, even if it causes us to go bankrupt. I suspect my grandmother would have been most confused at our interpretation of what the Christmas holiday has become, with the hustle and bustle of materialism all but eclipsing the Savior whose birth we are ostensibly celebrating.
Instead of hysterical shopping on Black Friday, my grandmother engaged in her frenzy of cleaning. I have developed my own post-Thanksgiving cleaning traditions, which complement those of my mother and grandmother. [This is what I tell myself, to justify my own lack of preparedness for the holiday that comes around every 365 days like calendar work, but which still manages to take me by surprise every single time.]
I wait for my mother, who lives in Minnesota, to arrive for her annual two week visit, and then assign her the task of trying to get my filthy house clean enough to pass for holiday ready. I would posit that she needs to keep busy, or she gets bored, but of course, I don't think it would shock her to learn I simply don't have time to get it done in my hectic life.
I think it's safe to say, now that I am almost middle aged, that I do not keep the kind of house that my own mother did, to say nothing of my grandmother. I have other priorities, like working. [Of course, the nagging voice in my head reminds me that my mother also worked, and still managed to keep the house cleaner than I do. But I don't listen to little voices in my head, because that would make me crazy, right?]
I would love to have the time to tear my entire house apart and do a thorough cleaning, from floor to rafters. Instead, I shove my Swiffer WetJet around the kitchen floor in a frantic effort to pretend I really care, in between baking cookies and buying gifts, hoping that the memories we are making will count for more than a clean floor or washed walls. I wonder what Grandma would have thought of a Swiffer? I have a feeling she would have felt the same way I feel about spell check - it's nice to have, but it makes us lazy, and I don't think she would have approved.
I find myself pondering with interest what kind of housekeeper my daughter will be. Since the standards seem to fall with each generation, I fear my grandchildren will recognize hand sanitizer, but not know what a mop is. But then again, that would mean they would think my standards were impossibly high. It's all about perspective, and that is one I can live with.
Happy Thanksgiving!
