The Elusive Joy of Clean
Two weekends ago, my live Christmas tree and wreaths were gone, burnt in a lovely Epiphany bonfire.
But the rest of the Christmas kitsch remained – garlands of evergreen and poinsettia on the mantles and stairways, antique and new figurines, crèches, more wreaths, mistletoe, candles, bows and ornaments that adorned doorways, shelves and walls. During the Christmas season the kitsch is festive and warm; afterward, it’s just clutter. I wilted at the level of lugging and packing and organizing it would take to find the boxes in the shed and properly take down and stow away all these items.
One week ago, to release pent up anxiety and sorrow at losing our beautiful dog to cancer, I threw myself into “putting away Christmas” and also to cleaning away obvious traces of dog hair, food, dog vitamins and medications. I scrubbed, I vacuumed, I de-cluttered, I threw away stuff; I gave away stuff. “Mom, the house hasn’t looked this clear and clean in a while. It looks great.” I know, I thought, with a happy, satisfied smile.
Isn’t it a great feeling to sit down and not have weeks’ old clutter tugging at you? Isn’t it beautiful to see a hardwood floor gleaming around and under furniture, with no trace of dust bunnies or stray crumbs or socks or hubby’s stray newspaper clippings? Organization and clean surfaces on the outside make me feel stronger and cleaner on the inside. It’s like I have cleared away any excuse that keeps me from spending time on other more valuable things. And I could invite folks over and feel comfortable and free.
This pleasant condition lasted oh, about 12 hours as far as I could tell. It was a grand 12 hours, but my deep need to get control of a messy life went a step further. I told my 17-year-old that she had to clean her room. You have to understand the breadth and depth of this request. If you’ve ever seen the Friends episode called Dirty Girl, well, my daughter’s room is what we would imagine Dirty Girl’s bedroom was like – “a pile of garbage,” live vermin included. Truly.
We have lived in this adorable house for seven years. Teen Daughter has an over-sized room with big windows overlooking the front gardens and the Short Hills mountain range. For the seven years we’ve been here, she has cleaned her room, oh, maybe once or twice. And I think it was I who did the cleaning. I remember finding a whole melted Fudgesicle on the top shelf of her closet under a box. She confessed that years before, when she was “younger” she heard us come home from work and thought she shouldn’t have the treat before dinner so she threw it in her closet. Her closet is a delightful, large walk-in closet. But there was no walking in it because it was packed solid with … oh god, who knows? Clothes, toys, papers, anything she didn’t want to show on the other side of the door.
She didn’t use her dresser either. So, all her clothes were on the floor. You could not see any surface in her room – not the dresser, the desk, the book shelves, the floor, the bedside table, or even the walls, which are covered inch to inch in posters. The posters don’t bother me – cute guys! But the rest… .
Over the years I have tried to tell her to clean it up. But, I am not the kind of mother to blackmail my kids or get into arguments with them over things that are not life-threatening. I did try to make the point that it was unsanitary and therefore could indeed compromise her health. Eh. 'Didn’t matter.
Her father was no help because his den across the hall is a bona fide disaster area with no surfaces visible either (gee, ya think this is hereditary??). Seven years. There were years I begged. Years I ignored it and figured she’d grow out of it. Very early (like when she was 10 years old) I stopped doing her laundry because I couldn’t stand bringing down a laundry basket full of stinky clothes, unloading them to put in the washer, only to find clean, folded clothes under the pile of dirty ones, still in the basket!! Aurgh. So, even having to do her own laundry for the past seven years has had no effect. For some years I tried to guilt her into cleaning, telling her how unhappy it made me that she ignored my “orders” or requests. Nothing worked, and again, it’s her life and her room. It’s a pretty stupid thing for me to be unhappy about (that’s probably why the guilt angle didn’t work - she probably saw through it and knew it was stupid). I love her and if she and I were going to come to blows, it was going to be about something substantial and worth fighting about. A messy room didn’t qualify.
So, back to my need to purge during my anxiety and sorrow. About a week before our dog died, I was already feeling “too messy.” It was a new year, after all, a new decade. Teen Daughter would be going away to college this year. Something had to change. So one morning, certainly “out of the blue” for her, I went into her bedroom, carefully choosing where I stepped so I wouldn’t twist an ankle. Teen Daughter was still in bed. First, she was surprised to see me enter her room at all; then she was fairly alarmed by seeing me walk through the garbage and to her bedside. When I started talking, the look on her face went from surprise to quizzical to OMG to true alarm. I said,
"My dear, I have been waiting and waiting for some big blow-up. For something awful to happen between us or for you to do something really bad so that I would have a reason to yell at you and say what I have to say.” She’s perplexed and getting nervous. I see her eyebrows knit.
“But that hasn’t happened. And I love you so much. I have tried so many ways in the past to get across to you what I have to tell you, and none of them has worked. But this just can’t go on any longer.” I see her gulp. She’s ready to cry and is getting scared.
“This is going to have to be the way I tell you.” I sit on her bed, reach down and scoop her into my arms in a big hug. She probably thinks I’m going to tell her I have a terminal disease or that mom and dad are divorcing.
In a loving voice, I say, “Darling, you HAVE to clean your room. Really. For real. You have to clean it. All of it. No, ‘yes, mom,’ and then doing nothing. I know it is going to be hard, but, we can’t go on this way. You must clean your room. Do you understand?” She lets out a sigh of relief and disbelief.
She said she understood, and that was that. But she didn’t clean her room - until this past week, when I was doing my “sorrow cleaning.”
“My part” of the house was looking and feeling and smelling so good. All the Christmas stuff was gone and neatly packed into the shed. Rugs and floors and stairs were vacuumed. Kitchen counters were wiped squeaky clean as were the sinks. It was great. And I thought, well, I will be cleaning so she may as well get busy. I told her that was the day. We had a 3-day holiday weekend. At first there were deflation and worry and quiet tears. Then there was me and her sister trying to give her advice as to how to get started and tackle the layers of squalor. She did not appreciate the advice. She finally stopped crying and we all agreed to let her approach it her own way. Well.
In the next 12 hours what was my clean house became the dumping ground for the stuff that was in her closet and in her room. There were about 5 large black trash bags she filled; one was so heavy she couldn’t even lift it. One small trash bag she brought downstairs holding out in front of her. “Mom, I’m fairly certain there is a live mouse in this bag. What should I do with it??” But there was more. There were about a hundred stuffed animals and toys – stuff from the size of a pea to the size of a breadbox. In my front hall are two big white trash bags full of stuffed animals. There were crafts and notebooks and books, books and more books. There are four boxes of books, some “keepers,” some “not sure,” and some throw away or give away in my front hall. There was a table that held her printer that smashed into pieces when she tried to move it, and a lamp, a globe, a chair and draped over it a toga made from a bedsheet for toga-day which was months ago, and other equipment that got shoved out into the upstairs hall. It’s all still there. There are musical instruments and a huge box of craft supplies, and small boxes of other treasures sitting on the front room sofa, floor and each chair. There are two reams of lined notebook paper teetering on a shelf in the family room, and a big box of old cassette tapes on the floor. There are miscellaneous items on the stairs - sneakers, a notebook, a hairy ball, a fancy beach theme wall hook. I don’t know where all the outgrown clothes are.
To clean a room like Teen Daughter’s, you do have to remove the things that you don’t need any more, and you have to organize all that stuff she’s had since we moved in when she was 10 years old, so that we can appropriately inspect and evaluate and decide what to do with it. After removing so much, she vacuumed her room, glory be.
The pretty, welcoming “surfaces” in my clean home – the hardwood floors and vacuumed rug in the front hall, the comforting chairs and sofa in the front room, the comfy family room carpet – are now largely covered with toys, boxes and various other crap. Her room is clean now. My house is … a mess.
“Clean” is delightful and elusive. Love is delightful and pervasive. It's also substantive and persistent and transcendent. I wouldn’t trade the Daughter even with all her mess for anything in the world.
Copyright (c) 2010
But the rest of the Christmas kitsch remained – garlands of evergreen and poinsettia on the mantles and stairways, antique and new figurines, crèches, more wreaths, mistletoe, candles, bows and ornaments that adorned doorways, shelves and walls. During the Christmas season the kitsch is festive and warm; afterward, it’s just clutter. I wilted at the level of lugging and packing and organizing it would take to find the boxes in the shed and properly take down and stow away all these items.
One week ago, to release pent up anxiety and sorrow at losing our beautiful dog to cancer, I threw myself into “putting away Christmas” and also to cleaning away obvious traces of dog hair, food, dog vitamins and medications. I scrubbed, I vacuumed, I de-cluttered, I threw away stuff; I gave away stuff. “Mom, the house hasn’t looked this clear and clean in a while. It looks great.” I know, I thought, with a happy, satisfied smile.
Isn’t it a great feeling to sit down and not have weeks’ old clutter tugging at you? Isn’t it beautiful to see a hardwood floor gleaming around and under furniture, with no trace of dust bunnies or stray crumbs or socks or hubby’s stray newspaper clippings? Organization and clean surfaces on the outside make me feel stronger and cleaner on the inside. It’s like I have cleared away any excuse that keeps me from spending time on other more valuable things. And I could invite folks over and feel comfortable and free.
This pleasant condition lasted oh, about 12 hours as far as I could tell. It was a grand 12 hours, but my deep need to get control of a messy life went a step further. I told my 17-year-old that she had to clean her room. You have to understand the breadth and depth of this request. If you’ve ever seen the Friends episode called Dirty Girl, well, my daughter’s room is what we would imagine Dirty Girl’s bedroom was like – “a pile of garbage,” live vermin included. Truly.
We have lived in this adorable house for seven years. Teen Daughter has an over-sized room with big windows overlooking the front gardens and the Short Hills mountain range. For the seven years we’ve been here, she has cleaned her room, oh, maybe once or twice. And I think it was I who did the cleaning. I remember finding a whole melted Fudgesicle on the top shelf of her closet under a box. She confessed that years before, when she was “younger” she heard us come home from work and thought she shouldn’t have the treat before dinner so she threw it in her closet. Her closet is a delightful, large walk-in closet. But there was no walking in it because it was packed solid with … oh god, who knows? Clothes, toys, papers, anything she didn’t want to show on the other side of the door.
She didn’t use her dresser either. So, all her clothes were on the floor. You could not see any surface in her room – not the dresser, the desk, the book shelves, the floor, the bedside table, or even the walls, which are covered inch to inch in posters. The posters don’t bother me – cute guys! But the rest… .
Over the years I have tried to tell her to clean it up. But, I am not the kind of mother to blackmail my kids or get into arguments with them over things that are not life-threatening. I did try to make the point that it was unsanitary and therefore could indeed compromise her health. Eh. 'Didn’t matter.
Her father was no help because his den across the hall is a bona fide disaster area with no surfaces visible either (gee, ya think this is hereditary??). Seven years. There were years I begged. Years I ignored it and figured she’d grow out of it. Very early (like when she was 10 years old) I stopped doing her laundry because I couldn’t stand bringing down a laundry basket full of stinky clothes, unloading them to put in the washer, only to find clean, folded clothes under the pile of dirty ones, still in the basket!! Aurgh. So, even having to do her own laundry for the past seven years has had no effect. For some years I tried to guilt her into cleaning, telling her how unhappy it made me that she ignored my “orders” or requests. Nothing worked, and again, it’s her life and her room. It’s a pretty stupid thing for me to be unhappy about (that’s probably why the guilt angle didn’t work - she probably saw through it and knew it was stupid). I love her and if she and I were going to come to blows, it was going to be about something substantial and worth fighting about. A messy room didn’t qualify.
So, back to my need to purge during my anxiety and sorrow. About a week before our dog died, I was already feeling “too messy.” It was a new year, after all, a new decade. Teen Daughter would be going away to college this year. Something had to change. So one morning, certainly “out of the blue” for her, I went into her bedroom, carefully choosing where I stepped so I wouldn’t twist an ankle. Teen Daughter was still in bed. First, she was surprised to see me enter her room at all; then she was fairly alarmed by seeing me walk through the garbage and to her bedside. When I started talking, the look on her face went from surprise to quizzical to OMG to true alarm. I said,
“But that hasn’t happened. And I love you so much. I have tried so many ways in the past to get across to you what I have to tell you, and none of them has worked. But this just can’t go on any longer.” I see her gulp. She’s ready to cry and is getting scared.
“This is going to have to be the way I tell you.” I sit on her bed, reach down and scoop her into my arms in a big hug. She probably thinks I’m going to tell her I have a terminal disease or that mom and dad are divorcing.
In a loving voice, I say, “Darling, you HAVE to clean your room. Really. For real. You have to clean it. All of it. No, ‘yes, mom,’ and then doing nothing. I know it is going to be hard, but, we can’t go on this way. You must clean your room. Do you understand?” She lets out a sigh of relief and disbelief.
She said she understood, and that was that. But she didn’t clean her room - until this past week, when I was doing my “sorrow cleaning.”
“My part” of the house was looking and feeling and smelling so good. All the Christmas stuff was gone and neatly packed into the shed. Rugs and floors and stairs were vacuumed. Kitchen counters were wiped squeaky clean as were the sinks. It was great. And I thought, well, I will be cleaning so she may as well get busy. I told her that was the day. We had a 3-day holiday weekend. At first there were deflation and worry and quiet tears. Then there was me and her sister trying to give her advice as to how to get started and tackle the layers of squalor. She did not appreciate the advice. She finally stopped crying and we all agreed to let her approach it her own way. Well.
In the next 12 hours what was my clean house became the dumping ground for the stuff that was in her closet and in her room. There were about 5 large black trash bags she filled; one was so heavy she couldn’t even lift it. One small trash bag she brought downstairs holding out in front of her. “Mom, I’m fairly certain there is a live mouse in this bag. What should I do with it??” But there was more. There were about a hundred stuffed animals and toys – stuff from the size of a pea to the size of a breadbox. In my front hall are two big white trash bags full of stuffed animals. There were crafts and notebooks and books, books and more books. There are four boxes of books, some “keepers,” some “not sure,” and some throw away or give away in my front hall. There was a table that held her printer that smashed into pieces when she tried to move it, and a lamp, a globe, a chair and draped over it a toga made from a bedsheet for toga-day which was months ago, and other equipment that got shoved out into the upstairs hall. It’s all still there. There are musical instruments and a huge box of craft supplies, and small boxes of other treasures sitting on the front room sofa, floor and each chair. There are two reams of lined notebook paper teetering on a shelf in the family room, and a big box of old cassette tapes on the floor. There are miscellaneous items on the stairs - sneakers, a notebook, a hairy ball, a fancy beach theme wall hook. I don’t know where all the outgrown clothes are.
To clean a room like Teen Daughter’s, you do have to remove the things that you don’t need any more, and you have to organize all that stuff she’s had since we moved in when she was 10 years old, so that we can appropriately inspect and evaluate and decide what to do with it. After removing so much, she vacuumed her room, glory be.
The pretty, welcoming “surfaces” in my clean home – the hardwood floors and vacuumed rug in the front hall, the comforting chairs and sofa in the front room, the comfy family room carpet – are now largely covered with toys, boxes and various other crap. Her room is clean now. My house is … a mess.
“Clean” is delightful and elusive. Love is delightful and pervasive. It's also substantive and persistent and transcendent. I wouldn’t trade the Daughter even with all her mess for anything in the world.
Copyright (c) 2010
Wonderful story! I loved the "confrontation" -- I can just imagine it. And since I have the experience of having moved into a new home (where basically I am the only one to make a mess), I have the comfort of cleared surfaces and shiny floors, at least every few days. SO nice. Hang in there and you'll have your clean home back. And congratulations on the Teen Daughter -- I may send this to my way-past teen daughter.
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