Kindergarten Clean Police

One of the things that Stacia and I have traditionally irritated each other about is housecleaning. I'd say that neither one of us is an immaculately clean sort of person, but also that neither one of us is a complete slob.

That said, one of us likes things to stay relatively neat and one of us doesn't mind a little clutter.

So the story goes: the tidy one puts things in piles or tucks them away in order to keep the table top clear, and then the less tidy one sees the recently cleared space and uses it for her other loose items. And the process repeats, endlessly, until both of us are dizzy with the spin of items piling up and being swept away, piling up, and disappearing.

"Where did my Item X go?" the less tidy one will ask.

"I put it in the pile of Loose Items for you to put away," the less cluttered one will respond.

"But where is that pile?" the less tidy one will say, becoming irritated with the fact that she can't find the important thing she just put on the dining room table, last week, because her neat freak girlfriend keeps moving her shit.

The longer we live together, the more we each bend a little to the other. The tidy one keeps her space clear but shrugs off the piles that aren't an immediate health hazard. The cluttered one notices when she spills cranberry juice on the counter tops and takes the time to wipe it up.

So, all in all, is our house tidy? No, definitely not. But is it terribly messy? No, not usually. It is probably a pretty average-looking place--could use more frequent vacuuming, dusting, and window-washing, but the dog toys stay in their box unless Luna is playing with them, the newspaper gets recycled or composted after we finish reading it, and the kitchen is usually (most of the time) clean.

I have backed off a lot on arguing about the state of the house. Am I the tidy one or the cluttered one? Does it matter? In fact, I think we each wear both titles, depending on our moods and how busy we are. I certainly can think of times when I have been the one to cover the table with loose sheet music, old mail, a broken metronome, and snacks from the car. And I can think of the times when I have grumbled over that same table being covered with Stacia's drill set, scuba clothing, and loose receipts.

The point is that neither one of us is perfect at keeping her share of the house clean, and the longer I live in a community of three people and three animals, the more I can relax about the pile of dusty, defunct speakers that sits in the corner of the dining room, because how important is it that they move? What sort of personal satisfaction will I get from having that corner clear? Sometimes I think I take physical clutter a little too seriously--that if the table is strewn with crap, I feel like it's personal. Like my head is strewn with spiderwebs and I can't find a coherent thought through all the chaos. (Now you know who the nagging, tidy one is.)

In any case, this is a process and I am making small strides toward being okay with the state of the house at any given moment.

But yesterday, when a six-year-old piano student pointed out that our house is not very clean, I felt personally affronted. What! How dare she?! No, our house may not be spotless, but we try very hard to keep it liveable. "Liz, I do have a question, but it doesn't have to do with piano," the piano student said, as we finished up her lesson and she climbed down from the bench that is too tall for anyone under 4 feet.

"Sure," I said (these are usually my favorite kinds of questions), "What is it?"

She wrinkled her nose and gestured to the living room. "Do you ever clean your house?"

Ugh--that kid knew how to push my buttons! Feeling quite offended, I said, "Um, yes, we do clean the house, of course." I felt like I was stammering--trying to prove something to this Kindergarten Clean Police. What I wanted to do was retaliate. I wanted to assign her ten pages of theory homework or extra practicing. But instead, I just stood there, sheepishly looking around and noticing things like those dusty speakers, Luna's bones, and the mountain of shoes that had been silently growing near the front door.

At that moment, her mother arrived to take her home. As they walked out the door, I overheard the kid say, "Mom, they really need to clean their house."

To which the mom responded, "Well, honey. Some people just don't have time to keep their houses clean."