The Need for Clean!

I am often teased about my need for clean.  Friends and family have teased me about leaving a house so clean when I on vacation that burglars will stop, mid thievery to marvel at the Pinesol high they’ve acquired.

That isn’t at all the case at all!  I happen to like returning from a vacation, dirty laundry in tow, to find a house so clean all I have to do is the laundry.  If I had left the house dirty upon departure and then came home with dirty laundry in tow, I’d have a difficult time trying to prioritize my need for clean.  This way, it is clean, the clothes are dirty, the clothes need cleaned…my life is easier and I’m happier.

Most of my growing up years were spent with two parents working and the house not clean unless it was on weekends when people were expected over.  I can remember many surprise visits by folks that found us shoving everything imaginable lying about, into a clothes hamper or three, shoving them in the ONE bathroom in the house and closing the shower curtain on them.

As my children were growing up, I preferred spending time with my children to cleaning.  I could often be found with them outside.  We had moved out to the country so they could be outside and live a more open life in the countryside.  Our front yard was a baseball diamond and our home was open to the neighbor kids.  This didn’t make it easy for a clean house, but I think they had a happy house, and that was more important at the time.

As I got older I became more and more of a neatnik.  I get teased mercilessly because I would actually scrunch myself down to see where dirt may be hiding from different height perspectives.  Ok, that may have been a bit of overkill, but I swear to you, dirt calls to me from corners, cracks and crevices.  Clutter yodels my name until I go to it and make sure it is put where it goes.  I wish it didn’t, but it does.

This all brings me to the purchase of our new home.  Our home was owned by a 90-something year old woman, who had, with her husband, built it.  Prior to closing we were told the family would need two weeks after closing to settle the house and get their mother moved to an assisted living space.  We were assured at closing, that the time would be spent moving their mother and “cleaning” the house for their departure and our arrival.

Now, I know that not everyone cleans like I do.  I admit it.  I like the smell of bleach and if my house smells as if there is an indoor swimming pool somewhere in it, then my job has been done, and done well.  Knowing that, I didn’t expect the place to be MY kind of clean, but I did expect it to be clean.  I found out, when they did leave the house and hand over the keys, that my expectations of even the kind of clean I had given them hopeful credit for…was misguided.

Two months later, I still find things that surprise me in the area of non-clean and that upsets me a bit.  It makes me wonder what is hidden beneath the new siding and carpet.  It makes me wonder about them.

When we departed the condo we rented for one year, I left that thing so clean it squeaked.   It only needed painted (needed painted before we moved in as well, but that is a story for another time.)  I came to the new place to find pubic hair left in the drain, and debris and dirt left in the cabinets.  Bathroom floors unmopped and toilets not cleaned.  Mouse droppings in the basement and dirty traps upon the floor as well.  Yep, NOT clean.

In thinking about it though, had they cleaned it to my particular style ‘o clean, I’d still have gone back over it but it would have taken a lot less time.  I guess it all boils down to what you are comfy with.

Cleaning is part of making it my own though, and that…I’m happy with doing!