Tuesday, March 24, 2009

One symptom of bachelor life, especially noticeable after weeks and weeks of not vacuuming, is that nature will begin to work itself around you. Cobwebs will never cross your path directly, for example, instead wending alongside your daily route, cordoning you off from parts less visited. Spiders know better. Pill bugs cluster just out of sight, almost respectfully, and if they die, say, on the mantle, they’ll do so behind a clock. Look down at the floor, and you’ll notice dust congregates in a pattern, borne by powerful currents of routine to frame a walkway.

I’ve been trying to make the townhouse more livable and just plain presentable, and this weekend marked the first serious cleaning of the year. It was the whole dog and pony, Dyson on full roar, Lysol spritzer wielded furiously, and when the air cleared there was the immediate benefit of reclaimed space. I basically rediscovered my living room, you know? I could finally sit on a couch without plunging headfirst into webbing. More importantly, though, I’m now able to add to the scholarship of domestic upkeep.

For one thing, spider shit? Damn near impossible to scrub out. Of greater interest, however, is the distinction between organizing and cleaning, and why I do far less of the latter. Organizing involves the rearrangement of matter: corralling stray magazines into a neat stack, or putting pots and pans into the cupboard. I like organization. I gravitate toward this state. Cleaning, on the other hand, calls for the destruction of matter. You don’t want to herd all that grout, algae, and cooking grease into an orderly pile, after all. You want to destroy it. That’s just violent, which I find offensive, since I’m real peaceable.

Cleaning also tends to require more effort, and here we arrive at the heart of the matter. I’ll rearrange the stuff on my bathroom sink all day long–actually, I probably wouldn’t do that–but when it comes to wiping it down, I can wait for weeks. Why? Because I’ll trot out the cleaning supplies, scrub away, and then, days later, it’ll be dirty again and it’s, like, why did I even bother? Now, say I let the toothpaste residue build up for a month. I’ll expend the same amount of effort fetching the cleaning supplies, scrub a little harder, and the payoff will be even bigger. This is because the difference between sparkly cleanliness and monthlong build-up is greater than the difference between sparkly cleanliness and weeklong build-up. It’s a feel thing.

My kitchen island currently has a canister of oatmeal sitting neatly next to a tub of sugar and a bottle of vitamins. The surface itself, however, is covered with salt, sugar, oregano, Parmesan, dried spaghetti sauce, and milk. Sure, this probably isn’t ideal for the surface, but hey! It’s a slab of stone. What’s it going to do? Secretly I’m hoping these substances will react to form a new mineral or something. But even if that doesn’t happen, I’ll feel that much more accomplished when I finally do get around to cleaning it.