Another joy of becoming un-homeless.
Something else I’d never had to do during my twelve years of homelessness: Clean house.
I became willing to do it quite soon after I moved into my own place. That contrasts with my attitudes as a young adult. For some time after I first moved into my own place now, I wasn’t exactly able to do it, lacking tools and, to some extent, the wherewithal to get or buy tools: broom, dustpan, mop(*), bucket, cleaning fluid or detergent, toilet bowl brush.
I wanted to get Spic’N’Span, the powerful cleaner I remembered from childhood, but I could not find it in any stores. I saw Fabuloso at the Save-A-Lot, and since this has a good reputation, bought it.
The directions say to mix 1/8 cup Fabuloso with a gallon of water. I have no easy way to measure a gallon. So I’m going to mix 1/16 cup, one tablespoon, with a half gallon. But if I then rinse off the measuring spoon at the sink, a significant amount of this powerful cleaner will be wasted. Here’s what I’m going to do instead:
I will fill a 2-liter empty soda bottle with water; pour two cups of that into my glass Pyrex measuring cup(**); rinse off the measuring spoon in that; and pour it back into the two-liter bottle.
Is two liters too little to mop my apartment?
I’ll use an approach I learned years ago from a book my Mormon sister-in-law gave me, by the Mormon author Don Aslett, who has his own housecleaning business and also has a relentlessly positive outlook on life.
I’m not going to pour the cleaning fluid into a bucket. It will stay in the two-liter bottle. I will pour it onto a washcloth, clean an area (of floor, counter, tile, whatever) with that, and then rinse that out in a bucket. In contrast to the more commonplace approach, where the cleaning fluid in the bucket is continuously losing power, and whatever’s left of its power ultimately goes down the drain; this way, the cleaning fluid retains its full power the whole time; whatever’s left, is saved for the next go-round; and none of it gets wasted.
When I began thinking about these things, this time around, I would recall that in the past, cleaning was normally the work of servants, or slaves. Like wet-nursing. I wonder now about these divisions of labor. I recall that, in grade school, I looked down on sanitation workers, because they dealt with disgusting smells and substances. I don’t do that now. One of my brothers had explained to me how essential their work is.
The same sister-in-law lived for some years in a well-to-do neighborhood. She said that some of the women, housewives, in that area lived in filth; for reason that they regarded cleaning as below them, something to be done by servants, albeit they could not afford servants.
Similarly, as a young adult, I was loath to clean house for reason that I had a perfectionist worldview that said dirt has no right to exist. Not accepting it, I refused to act on it. Later, I came to accept dirt as inevitable, and so, cleaning, or the need for it, as inevitable, too.
(*)I don’t plan to ever use a mop, actually. My former practice, when I was the “super” of that rooming house in Barclay, was to get down on my hands and knees, and I expect to do the same thing now. (**)Asked for and got this at the shelter several years ago for Christmas. That, and a two-quart saucepan, were the two essential things I would need for my kitchen, once I became housed.
Comments