Clean Sweep

Clean Sweep

Our good friends Mike and Mary are coming for a visit in a couple of weeks and suddenly the house is filthy. Okay so maybe it’s just looks that way to me. Realistically I know that Mike and Mary could care less if I polish up my dust bunnies—this is merely insanity on my part. What I’d really like to do is pull off a few minor improvements, like painting the house, replacing the carpeting and furniture and re-doing the kitchen and bathrooms, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. So I’ve settled on the cleaning crazies.

Yesterday I started with the fridge. I scrubbed the shelves, shined the chrome, and blasted everything else with toxic chemicals. Afterwards I enjoyed the glow. Until I noticed how dirty the stove seemed in comparison.

Out came the steel wool and elbow grease. I’ve always hated this stove. When I bought it I thought that it looked wonderfully easy to clean. The oven whispered in my ear that it was self cleaning and that a mere lick of a sponge would take care of the rest. Unfortunately I ignored the evil snickering coming from the burners and laid down my credit card. It wasn’t until the appliance was delivered that I discovered what a major pain it was to clean--it had nooks and crannies that a blowtorch couldn’t reach. Mariel is the only one who actually enjoys tackling it when she’s in for a visit. Afterwards I don’t let anyone cook anything on it for at least a week.

Stove done, I thought that I deserved a rest until I noticed that the dishwasher looked dirtier than the dishes it was supposed to clean. And then the cabinets, the backsplash, the floor—everything looked like it should be immediately condemned. Maybe we could just move to a hotel for the week-end so Mike and Mary need never see this disaster that is my house. When I announced my brilliant idea to Steve, he just looked at me with the look that he reserves for all hopeless idiots that cross his path, and told me that somehow he didn’t think that our friends would notice anything but us.

It’s funny because when we visited them last summer, Mike and Mary were in the midst of renovating their house and apologizing for the mess, but all I could see was their welcoming smiles. Of course that doesn’t help me now since we stayed in their newly renovated, drop dead gorgeous guest room, and their accommodations here will be comparatively Spartan, though I think I can spring for a brand new bar of soap.

We live in a split ranch. The downstairs is a complete apartment which served as the perfect place for my parents to stay when they visited. Over the years it has also been wonderful to be able to extend invitations to friends to stay over whenever they wished. Because of that I’ve always kept the bedroom blissfully empty, fending off my family’s efforts to turn it into a storage room. That has held true since we moved in twenty years ago, but now it’s occupied by my husband. Steve is excitedly working on his own business and the downstairs bedroom has been transformed into his office. It’s perfect for him but not so perfect for guests. But he has promised me that he will quickly turn it back into a bedroom for our friends’ visit.

So after cleaning myself into a frenzy in the house, I moved on to the garage, because of course Mike and Mary will be spending so much time there! (I am truly nuts!) Out came the broom. I swept viciously while keeping up a constant grumbling about how dusty it was, how many spider webs there were, and how no one ever sweeps in here but me. I lifted the broom to move a bench then proceeded to get it stuck on something when I put it down again. I looked down to see that the broom was now firmly secured to what I realized was a sticky mouse trap that Steve had put down a few months ago. I tugged and pulled to no avail.

Without thinking, I decided to try and secure the trap to the floor so that I could get some leverage, and without thinking I used my foot. Now, of course my shoe was stuck. I began pulling like a mad woman at both the broom and my foot, simultaneously cursing and laughing to myself at the ridiculous predicament that I had gotten myself into. I believe I was channeling Lucy Ricardo. I hopped over to the garage door and began yelling for Steve, who came out, took one look at me and collapsed laughing.

“Okay, Okay I know I look ridiculous, just get me out of this!”
“Why didn’t you just take your shoe off?” he managed to sputter still holding his sides.

I looked at him, looked down and realized that perhaps, just perhaps I had been doing a bit too much cleaning. It’s really not good for your brain or your soul. So after Steve got me unstuck I went upstairs, poured myself a glass of wine, put my feet up and decided that Mike and Mary would love us even if our mouse traps were dusty. After all, that’s why we love them.