It all started with the floors. As the holidays careened toward their inevitable conclusion and the hope of a New Year was poised on the figurative horizon, all I could see was my filthy floors. Prior to the arrival of my seasonal company, I should have finished the preparations with the floors clean. However, a few unplanned visits to the doctor’s office had stolen my opportunity. By Christmas day, my floors were so ever-loving disgusting that I cringed when the heavenly morning sunbeam shone on the miscellaneous crud at the kitchen threshold. During our brunch preparation, as food was dripping and dropping onto the kitchen floor, I was thankful for the camouflage properties of the new cork flooring. Three days later, my houseguests made hasty plans for a day trip after my “floor cleaning day” announcement. Time wouldn’t permit the use of the steam cleaner I’d borrowed from my sister-in-law. I barely managed to vacuum the first floor and was three mop strokes from finishing the kitchen floor, still clad in my stinky running attire, when the doorbell rang with yet another visitor.
The New Year loomed ahead but I was not concerned with getting tipsy on bubbly and professing my resolutions. Instead, I listened to the tick-tock of my primal inner housekeeping clock. Randomly and maniacally, I flitted from room to room performing compulsive tasks which seemed the dance steps to this inner rhythm. I began to clean, organize, label, purge, fix, and decorate everything in my frenzied path. Much like the nesting urge of an expectant mother, it was time to birth a new year. The madness which began with the filthy wooden floors, spread to the pantry cabinet and closets. The bed linens in the guest bedroom might still have been warm when I tore them from their happy nest and marched them to the laundry room. If only time-off was time-off, a holiday actually a holiday or a vacation felt like a vacation. My inner housekeeping timetable apparently disregards sentimentality and semantics.
What is it about clean floors? From Protestants to Puritans, many agree there is righteousness to a clean floor. I randomly and unscientifically polled some women friends to get their thoughts. One said she felt like Super Mom when she cleaned her floor. Her clean floor was safe for her bambinos to crawl upon, whereas, prior to motherhood, she had no recollection of floors. Another said cleaning was evil. Another said, since the cleaning of the floor is the final task, it is then shiny waxy cherry on top of the clean house sundae. Proof that you and your cleaning are complete. A time honored accomplishment valued by our mothers and their mothers before them. I think my clean floor feels momentarily like my soul and karma are clean. Or, I just have a clean floor which will be dirty in forty-nine seconds because, “Hark,” I hear the pitter patter of dirty little feet en route to accidentally knock over his juice for the fifth time this week.
“A place for everything and everything in its place,” is the phrase that embodies the goal of the organizational mania. If only the people selling you all the stuff to create magnificent magical clutter-free closets and garages would come over and help, we’d all be set. I’ll bet their closets don’t look as good as yours do. “A bin for everything and everything in its bin,” would be more truthful. I couldn’t say no to those three gargantuan six dollar red and green end of season Tupperware bins. I plotted out loud to my husband in the large chain store,” If I put my ornaments in those, I free up the others to organize the rest of the stuff in the attic.” And then I asked, “Would you please carry them to the car?” He didn’t flinch, God love him.
