sessifet | Cleaning

To those that know me, it should come as no surprise that I am not exactly God's gift to the world when it comes to housework. I loathe doing the dishes, I detest vacuuming, and I seriously don’t see the point of keeping every surface in my house free of dust. I mean, who is going to look on top of my cupboards? (I certainly hope no one actually decides to check the top of my cupboards anytime soon, because I’m fairly certain there’s a thriving colony of dust bunnies up there by now.)

Of course, when I have guests coming over, I clean the entire house, and if my guests are allergic I will clean even more vigorously. In fact, there is one room in the house that gets cleaned every other day (guest bedroom), because there is usually a reasonable chance my sister and her fiancé will drop in and spend the night, and they’re both very allergic. But otherwise, I'll not break out the vacuum cleaner and dust cloths until the dust bunnies start tumble-weeding through the living room whenever someone opens a door or a window.

I know I should clean more regularly, but it's hard to be enthusiastic about dragging forth the cleaning equipment and cleaning the house from top to bottom, because in a week’s time I'll have to do it all over again. In fact, vacuuming and dusting is completely thankless in this household, mostly because of the cats. I swear, they lurk behind (or in Snowball’s case, under.) the sofa until I’ve finished dragging the Sucking Monster of Doom™ through the room, wait until I’ve started vacuuming the hallways and stairs, saunter back out, sit in the middle of the room and go *foof*. I go back to the living room and there's cat hair everywhere. And then they wander through the rest of the house and *foof* all over the damn place. I just can't win.

The bedroom gets cleaned more often, because hey, we sleep there, and neither of us particularly relish the idea of balls of lint and hair marching up our noses and invading our brains. Unfortunately, we have a small problem here: the bed to bedroom ratio is a bit off. It means I can't vacuum properly under the bed without removing the mattress. I can reach most of the area, but there is one bit that I can’t reach. And it all builds up from there. It's dust bunny heaven. They’re biding their time and growing until they’re big and strong enough so they can lift spears and jab them into my ankle when I get out of bed. (Well, not exactly. The one time something jabbed sharp objects in my ankle it was actually Snowball grabbing me, but it was somewhat fun to scream 'The dust bunnies are attacking!', jump back under the covers and force a very bewildered boyfriend to bring me coffee and toast to soothe my nerves.)

Where was I? Oh yes, removing the mattress. Now, my back's not really functioning properly and b) ever tried manhandling a mattress six time wider than you are while juggling a running vacuum cleaner at the same time? It always ends up with me humorously stuck between bed and mattress with the business end of the vacuum cleaner firmly attached to my nose or ear, or (on one memorable occasion) to my nipple. Good luck explaining that to your boyfriend. Bring heavy objects to throw at him when he laughs at you.

Anyway, I get to do that (the cleaning bit, not the vacuuming my nipple bit) at least twice a week and it always makes me feel happy and accomplished…until the cats realise there is a clean bedroom, and (joy of joys) a clean 'under the bed' bit. They waste no time shooting under there, and *foofing* up the place. At this point I always wonder if chasing them out with the vacuum cleaner would really be considered animal cruelty.

Same used to go for the office (yes, we have an office. Proper desk and all). For a while, I cleaned that about once a week (it was new and shiny, and look! Books all in their proper place!), until I figured out it meant Snowball and Kenny would climb in the bookcases and wriggle themselves behind my paperbacks, usually displacing a few in the process. Now I clean the bookcases about once a month, the cats spend a few days behind the books until it becomes too dusty and they emerge sneezing. It's a good trade-off, I'd say.

I know this all makes me sound like I’m a horrible slob, but I'm not. My inability to enthuse over household chores does not mean I live in my own filth, or (gods forbid) I think the work’s beneath me. It just means that I don't particularly care if my house doesn’t gleam in the sunlight.

(I hope no-one is actually expecting a point to all this, because frankly, there isn't. Sorry :) )