Clean Up

Today I cleaned my house.

You may say, "You announce this as if it is an uncommon occurrence."

Well that, my friend, is because it is. It is. I used to say that the reason I cleaned my house so rarely was because I had to clean so much at Starbucks that by the time I got home, I didn't have the energy for it. And given the constant cleaning that goes on at Starbucks, this could have been a valid reason. However, anyone who has known me in any of my previous incarnations (college student, nanny, missionary, living history museum interpreter) will know that it's all a smoke screen, because I didn't clean any more when I was those things than I do now. (When I was a nanny at least the family I worked for hired a cleaner . . . although she wasn't that great.)

Today I had to sit down with my computer for half an hour just so Oscar could settle because he is so not used to me spending most of a day off moving all over the house and actually being productive. And I'm fairly certain that at first when I pulled out the Lysol spray, he thought he must have done something wrong, because the last time I used it around here was back when he used to . . . well, you know what he used to do in the house.

It's not that I'm a slob, exactly. It's just that I'm kind of a methodical (by which I actually mean slow) cleaner, so that it takes about half the time to mess the place up again that it takes me to clean it. (Take today, for instance. I cleared off all the kitchen counters and scrubbed them, and then the Other Jenn came over for dinner and I made a chicken satay in the electric frying pan on the kitchen island . . . and suddenly there was grease everywhere. I cleaned that up right away. I'm just saying.) The feeling of futility that hangs over the whole prolonged enterprise just kind of daunts me.

But I have to say, I do enjoy a clean house. For at least five minutes.