My mind has become absolutely consumed by cleaning. I feel like my brain has eaten itself and all that’s left is white vinegar, rubber gloves and bar towels. Last night I had a nightmare about the bathroom floor.
I wouldn’t describe myself as obsessive exactly (about this at least). My mother, I would describe as obsessive. I’m sure most children remember being reprimanded by their parents for leaving their shoes in the den, for dropping their coat in the hallway, for the pile of clothes that obscured your bed. My mother, however, seemed even more extreme, with excessive bouts of hand washing and squirts of sanitizer. We found ourselves constantly at odds for too many reasons to count, one of which was the fact that she thought I was a slob and that I always seemed to be losing things: my ballet slippers, my swim goggles, my car keys, my plaid dress uniform skirt. I’ve gotten better about this as I’ve aged, if only because I’ve realized that putting things in their proper place does actually help you find them quicker and isn’t just something your mother says when she’s annoyed with you.
I texted my mother last night actually:
“I am bad at dusting.”
“I vacuum less than I should but more than I ever have when I lived anywhere else.”
“Well, maybe there was less dust in Wyoming.”
Dusting. Vacuuming. Dishes. Cat litter. Disinfect the tub. Disinfect the garbage can, inside and outside. Wipe down the counters and coffee table and sideboard. Scrub the burnt bits off of the sheet pan. Hang the flypaper for the gnats that invaded when you waited too long to take the trash out last week.
Every day I feel like there is a new stain for me to treat, a new layer of grime on the floor that I haven’t vacuumed. It feels shameful to me, that I am unable to maintain my space and keep it orderly. There’s a difference between a space feeling lived in and feeling like you're living in filth.
I think of my friend who pondered recently that most men don’t know how to clean because their mothers did it for them. But it made me wonder: Isn’t this supposed to be easy? Shouldn’t I know how to clean? Was I not taught? Did I just not pay attention? I think part of me assumed that the work was, if not intuitive, at least simple enough to maintain without excessive research and practice.
Part of me loves the adventure of stain removal (if you hit red wine with cold water immediately it almost always comes completely out). Part of me loves the way the slipcover seems to almost shine after I run a vacuum over it to remove the cat hair. Part of me loves putting things in their proper place, the satisfaction that comes from having cooked a large meal and doing all the clean up afterwards myself. But the key word here is “part of me”. I did not sign up for this to be “all of me”. I did not plan to sign away my life to spray bottles and Clorox wipes and jugs of bleach. If it’s this hard to maintain order when it’s just me, what the hell is going to happen if I ever end up partnered with someone? What if I ever decide that yes, I think I do want to have children? Am I going to go full and absolute Nightbitch (you should read that book by the way it’s excellent) within the first week because I can barely take care of myself, let alone a small person that requires everything of me?
Part of it is the house I live in. It’s just too big for one person to maintain. There are too many places to hide clutter and track dirt. There are too many steps that need to each be vacuumed. Part of it is the fact that I have a cat, whom I love. But every day I feel like I wake up to a new mess of litter tracked everywhere, to a new item of clothing or pillow that’s wet with urine (we’re going to the vet this weekend because at this point there must be something wrong, or he’s just pissed at me). And part of it is just the fact that I am so hopelessly burnt out and I have so little extra time that it is almost impossible for me to do anything. I come home from working 8-5 to work more at my second job from 5:30 - 7:30, maybe 8:30. Then I spend what little energy I can muster tidying up, then I crawl into bed to watch Snapped and do my little Animal Crossing tasks to try to snatch some bit of joy and rest out of the day.
My skin feels dirty, like I’m living in a suit of grime and grease. Part of this is literal, as I feel like I am getting dirtier faster nowadays, but part of it is metaphorical. I’m reminded of the periods in college where it was difficult to shower, the times I would wrap myself up in my sheets in some attempt to melt. This feels similar somehow.
I picked up a zine in Philadelphia this weekend. It currently sits half-finished on my nightstand, but I like its sentiments about cleaning as ritual, meditation. I have often tried to use cleaning as an opportunity to come back to myself. Maybe this all feels so painful and exhausting because I am impossibly far away from myself. Maybe the distance is simply too great to be brought back by the circular motion of a dishrag, by the repetitive back and forth of the broom, the mop, the vacuum.
Yes. Personal freakish behavior: scrubbing the smudges off the plastic containers of Clorox wipes with more Clorox wipes.