Episode 15: Horrifying Housekeeping

Episode 15: Horrifying Housekeeping

Excerpts from "The Petty Chronicles" Every Monday

One of the reasons my husband fell out of love with me is that I couldn’t be June Cleaver to his Ward. No Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for this gal.  More like the Seal of Disapproval if you want to know the truth. If Martha Stewart ever showed up at my home unexpectedly, a highly unlikely scenario, she would throw up her arms in disgust and run screaming from the place.

I just can’t get excited about cleaning my house and keeping everything in it’s place at all times. It’s a full time job and not an inspiring one. It’s not that I don’t dream about a Martha perfect home. I do. But the distance between the vision and the actual doing is daunting. Besides, I have more important things to do than spit and polish, dust and iron.

In this respect, I can see why my ex-husband was disappointed when he married me. To him the term wife still congers a Donna Reed clone who devotes her life to keeping the home fires burning and it’s tough to be living in a 1960’s world in your head while occupying space in the 21st century. But he managed to achieve this mighty feat and expected me to jump in with both feet and don the apron and never ending smile while simultaneously holding down a full-time job and keeping him entertained in the bedroom. Given the fact that we had been together for seven years by the time we tied the knot, I still think this expectation was highly unwarranted but I never could convince him otherwise.

We’ve been apart for almost three years now and I can still hear his voice nagging me about my horrifying housekeeping and making me feel like I missed out on the cleaning gene when they were being handed out. After all, aren’t all women born with one? Don’t we fly out of the womb with a feather duster in our tiny fists ready to go to work on some man’s castle? Honestly, I think my ex took this imagined fact for granted and his shock and horror at discovering the truth about me was revisited on a daily basis. It was as if he thought I might get conked on the head by the cleaning fairy in the middle of the night while he slumbered peacefully. Like the tale of the Cobbler and the Shoes, where elves do the cobbler’s work at night, making him look like a magician, so too did hubby expect our home to be transformed.

He was a neat freak, but not terribly concerned about deep cleaning. Am I the only one that’s grossed out by tri-color mold forming in the corners of the shower? When he was single, this was a regular feature in his bathroom. That and food so old in his fridge that it was lining up to register to vote! This wouldn’t faze the man, but let a dust bunny appear and look out world it’s time to alert the media. I, on the other hand, like a clean house and clutter can be damned. I guess this incompatibility was just too much for him to bear.

Still, I would like to have a Martha perfect house if only for a day and I am working on it, despite my hatred of housework. Like monthly bills, the dirt just keeps reappearing and it seems like a futile exercise to deal with it, somehow. But I would like to be ready and able to welcome unexpected company, maybe even a date, into my home and be proud of how it looks, although at best, it will probably only be the neighbors that come to call. Still, I think about it all the time. Maybe, if I think harder, I’ll actually be motivated to make my house homier and all will finally be right with the world. And if that day finally comes, it will be too bad my ex won’t be here to see it. But I will and that’s all that really matters. Maybe I’ll send him a picture.