Are you Cleaning Impaired?
Quite some time ago, I came to the realisation that I am - - - Cleaning Impaired.
This should surprise no one who has been to my house; I just didn't write about it then although I thought about it. Perhaps I did. Who cares?
First of all, I want to declare proudly that I - am cleaning impaired. Not of my own personal self, because I like to take two hour baths, but of my general surroundings. Particularly my house. I don't like cleaning my house, I'm not good at it, and I'm not going to do it anymore, dammit. Things like dusting my walls and disassembling the stove after I cook a meal and putting all the pieces in the dishwasher (you know who you are, you read this occasionally) NEVER occur to me. The best I can do is go through a lot of trouble to install one of those stoves with the glass tops and then still not clean it. Something of this is made worse by Trey, who shares the trait of loving clean clothes with my mother. They both like to change their clothes several times a day and then think their clothes need to go immediately in the laundry basket. Nonsense. Clothes are happiest on the FLOOR. I think we should make this a movement, get it diagnosed, and get disability and since Quentin Crisp has gone to the big leather bar in the sky, get Sally Strothers (she isn't doing anything these days) or Tammy Faye to champion our cause.
First we have to have a movement -headed by, until we can get some celebrity to do it, Me. I am cordially inviting all of you who are cleaning impaired to contact me and rise up in favour of reading mystery novels in the bathtub instead of cleaning the bathtub; painting pictures to hang in front of the living room windows instead of cleaning them; and lying in the bed instead of making it, let us join hands and overthrow the forces of Clorox.
How do you tell if you are cleaning impaired or just lazy? Lazy people can see the dirt and clutter and just don't do anything about it. The problem with Cleaning Impaired people is that we can LOOK at a mess and not see it at all. We missed out (sniff sniff) on some crucial part of our childhood (sniff sniff) during which we were taught how to make a home look presentable. Right now, because of Trey cleaning the house, it looks less like some giant hand took a cardboard box diorama and shook the hell out of it, but that's what it normally looks like.
But we should get on to separating the sheep from the goats, or the goats from the people or the goats from the horses, or whatever it is, the goats have to go somewhere the hell else.
My house could currently appear in which of the following magazines?
A) Gourmet
B) Better Homes and Gardens
C) This Old House (before renovation)
D) Dementia Today (in an article about squalor and mental health)
I acquired my cleaning skills primarily from:
A) the maids
B) my mother
C) friends and acquaintances, magazines
D) wild badgers
Dirt in my house is best measured in:
A) those purely theoretical subatomic particles physicists get lots and lots of money to study and the rest of us need to drink gin by the liter in order to see
B) dust that is promptly vacuumed
C) Dust that is not so promptly vacuumed
D) Geologic layers
Help with household chores comes from:
A) the maids
B) my partner, and the children occasionally
C) the children most of the time, and my partner occasionally
D) I married someone specifically because they could clean the hell out of the house, despite their complete incompetence in all other fields.
My belongings in my house are arranged:
A) neatly in arrangements I have copyrighted so that decorating magazines may use them
B) neatly in rooms
C) In piles
D) in drifts
When something breaks in my house, I:
A) Nothing ever breaks; it's simply not allowed.
B) Throw it away and buy a new one
C) Try to fix it before throwing it away
D) put it in another room and try not to think about it while wishing the Broken Things Fairy will come and repair it.
When I clean the house, it takes me:
A) I don't know, I've never done it.
B) a couple of hours every day
C) the better part of a Saturday morning
D) I don't know, I've never done it.
Clothes in my house are most often found:
A) on me
B) arranged in closets by colour, style, and season
C) in the closets
D) where they have escaped the horror of being shut in the closet and are happy on the floor
Laundry in my house is done:
A) by the maids
B) according to a schedule, with baskets for different clothes and a regular rotation
C) when it's dirty
D) all in hot water, with plenty of bleach (regardless of colour) and then put in big piles on beds
The things in my refrigerator can best be described as:
A) from the finest gourmet delicatessens
B) Fresh and tasty
C) leftover takeaway
D) green and furry
In my house, cleaning supplies are:
A) brought by the maids
B) located in each room and I know exactly what to use on which surfaces
C) located in appropriate places throughout the house
D) several cans of "Old Dutch Cleanser" because I saw it in Mommie Dearest and randomly apply it to all surfaces that stay still, roughly with the frequency of a solar eclipse.
The things in my house I save but probably shouldn't are:
A) Old Christmas Cards I keep intending to frame
B) The kids', who are now in college, baby clothes.
C) The usual detritus I haven't gotten around to throwing away
D) Visa/bank statements from 1979, old telephone books, dead plants, questionable light bulbs,
and several pairs of scratched/broken sunglasses.
On my coffee table right now there are:
A) three candles arranged in a tray with glass gems
B) a coaster, the current issue of Better Homes and Gardens, and the remote for the television
C) a wine glass, the remote for the television, and a spit cup ( Some people are going to think I've not seen this, but you know who you are.)
D) a theremin, a pile of paintings, the manual for the stereo, an oil lamp made out of a piece of slate, several piles of books, a pile of CDs and a tape gun.
If I had to pack all my belongings and move, it would take me:
A) a few weeks
B) a few days
C) about a month
D) however long the Mesozoic lasted
When I redecorate, I choose:
A) colours that reflect future designer trends
B) colours that reflect current designer trends
C) neutrals to allow the house to resell easily
D) colours that don't show dirt; if I thought I could stand it, every room in the house would be black. .
This should surprise no one who has been to my house; I just didn't write about it then although I thought about it. Perhaps I did. Who cares?
First of all, I want to declare proudly that I - am cleaning impaired. Not of my own personal self, because I like to take two hour baths, but of my general surroundings. Particularly my house. I don't like cleaning my house, I'm not good at it, and I'm not going to do it anymore, dammit. Things like dusting my walls and disassembling the stove after I cook a meal and putting all the pieces in the dishwasher (you know who you are, you read this occasionally) NEVER occur to me. The best I can do is go through a lot of trouble to install one of those stoves with the glass tops and then still not clean it. Something of this is made worse by Trey, who shares the trait of loving clean clothes with my mother. They both like to change their clothes several times a day and then think their clothes need to go immediately in the laundry basket. Nonsense. Clothes are happiest on the FLOOR. I think we should make this a movement, get it diagnosed, and get disability and since Quentin Crisp has gone to the big leather bar in the sky, get Sally Strothers (she isn't doing anything these days) or Tammy Faye to champion our cause.
First we have to have a movement -headed by, until we can get some celebrity to do it, Me. I am cordially inviting all of you who are cleaning impaired to contact me and rise up in favour of reading mystery novels in the bathtub instead of cleaning the bathtub; painting pictures to hang in front of the living room windows instead of cleaning them; and lying in the bed instead of making it, let us join hands and overthrow the forces of Clorox.
How do you tell if you are cleaning impaired or just lazy? Lazy people can see the dirt and clutter and just don't do anything about it. The problem with Cleaning Impaired people is that we can LOOK at a mess and not see it at all. We missed out (sniff sniff) on some crucial part of our childhood (sniff sniff) during which we were taught how to make a home look presentable. Right now, because of Trey cleaning the house, it looks less like some giant hand took a cardboard box diorama and shook the hell out of it, but that's what it normally looks like.
But we should get on to separating the sheep from the goats, or the goats from the people or the goats from the horses, or whatever it is, the goats have to go somewhere the hell else.
My house could currently appear in which of the following magazines?
A) Gourmet
B) Better Homes and Gardens
C) This Old House (before renovation)
D) Dementia Today (in an article about squalor and mental health)
I acquired my cleaning skills primarily from:
A) the maids
B) my mother
C) friends and acquaintances, magazines
D) wild badgers
Dirt in my house is best measured in:
A) those purely theoretical subatomic particles physicists get lots and lots of money to study and the rest of us need to drink gin by the liter in order to see
B) dust that is promptly vacuumed
C) Dust that is not so promptly vacuumed
D) Geologic layers
Help with household chores comes from:
A) the maids
B) my partner, and the children occasionally
C) the children most of the time, and my partner occasionally
D) I married someone specifically because they could clean the hell out of the house, despite their complete incompetence in all other fields.
My belongings in my house are arranged:
A) neatly in arrangements I have copyrighted so that decorating magazines may use them
B) neatly in rooms
C) In piles
D) in drifts
When something breaks in my house, I:
A) Nothing ever breaks; it's simply not allowed.
B) Throw it away and buy a new one
C) Try to fix it before throwing it away
D) put it in another room and try not to think about it while wishing the Broken Things Fairy will come and repair it.
When I clean the house, it takes me:
A) I don't know, I've never done it.
B) a couple of hours every day
C) the better part of a Saturday morning
D) I don't know, I've never done it.
Clothes in my house are most often found:
A) on me
B) arranged in closets by colour, style, and season
C) in the closets
D) where they have escaped the horror of being shut in the closet and are happy on the floor
Laundry in my house is done:
A) by the maids
B) according to a schedule, with baskets for different clothes and a regular rotation
C) when it's dirty
D) all in hot water, with plenty of bleach (regardless of colour) and then put in big piles on beds
The things in my refrigerator can best be described as:
A) from the finest gourmet delicatessens
B) Fresh and tasty
C) leftover takeaway
D) green and furry
In my house, cleaning supplies are:
A) brought by the maids
B) located in each room and I know exactly what to use on which surfaces
C) located in appropriate places throughout the house
D) several cans of "Old Dutch Cleanser" because I saw it in Mommie Dearest and randomly apply it to all surfaces that stay still, roughly with the frequency of a solar eclipse.
The things in my house I save but probably shouldn't are:
A) Old Christmas Cards I keep intending to frame
B) The kids', who are now in college, baby clothes.
C) The usual detritus I haven't gotten around to throwing away
D) Visa/bank statements from 1979, old telephone books, dead plants, questionable light bulbs,
and several pairs of scratched/broken sunglasses.
On my coffee table right now there are:
A) three candles arranged in a tray with glass gems
B) a coaster, the current issue of Better Homes and Gardens, and the remote for the television
C) a wine glass, the remote for the television, and a spit cup ( Some people are going to think I've not seen this, but you know who you are.)
D) a theremin, a pile of paintings, the manual for the stereo, an oil lamp made out of a piece of slate, several piles of books, a pile of CDs and a tape gun.
If I had to pack all my belongings and move, it would take me:
A) a few weeks
B) a few days
C) about a month
D) however long the Mesozoic lasted
When I redecorate, I choose:
A) colours that reflect future designer trends
B) colours that reflect current designer trends
C) neutrals to allow the house to resell easily
D) colours that don't show dirt; if I thought I could stand it, every room in the house would be black. .
posted by SavageATL at 9:02 PM
1 Comments:
Hear, hear!!!! Sign me up!!! Although I don't particularly like the idea of getting Sally Struthers. Eew. Can't it be, say, Lindsay Lohan? Oh, wait a minute, I guess it can't be her, because coke makes some people clean obsessively. Hmmmm, then I vote for Paris Hilton. People listen to her.
I totally relate to the not seeing the mess. I've had people point out how something is filthy to me and I'm like, 'where? show me' and they keep pointing to a surface that looks spotless. And then I think they're crazy. Which they perbably are anyway.
Post a Comment
<< Home