Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

I am sure there are many things about me that drive my husband crazy, but the first that comes to mind is my insistence that I not leave the house on Saturdays until it is cleaned. I learned this lesson at the knee of my mother and, I admit, I pretty much live my life by WWJD rules. That acronym does not stand for “What Would Jesus Do?” in my world. It stands for “What Would Joan Do?” And what she did, and taught me to do, was to prioritize and value cleanliness and orderliness. I am definitely anal. I want the kitchen, the floors, and the bathrooms sparkling. Check that. I need the kitchen, the floors, and the bathrooms to be sparkling before I can go out and do anything else. I know I won’t enjoy a movie, a ballgame, shopping, perusing an antique store, a tenth as much if I know I have to come back to a cluttered or a dirty house. The same goes for vacation. Darryl wonders aloud if it really matters if the floors are clean when we are leaving for a week? The answer is a resounding “Yes!” I know I will feel much better mentally knowing that I will come home to a clean house at the end of the trip. (Besides, I couldn’t possibly let the cat sitter see my house dirty!)

My mama worked full time at a stressful job from the time I was four months old. She also made sure my dad, my older brother, and I had breakfast before she left for work and prepared a hot meal, complete with a meat and at least two vegetables, every evening after she got home. Once all of this was accomplished, she had usually been up and at it from six o’clock in the morning until seven or eight o’clock at night, so she didn’t do a lot of chores on weekdays in addition to this daily grind. Saturday mornings were the time for vacuuming, mopping, washing clothes, dusting furniture, changing sheets, and scrubbing tubs and showers. As soon as I was old enough to help, she assigned me to age-appropriate chores of my own. The list of my responsibilities grew with me. Though my brother and I did get an allowance, it was always tied to the chores we were responsible for getting accomplished. Instead of just handing us money for breathing, we were taught the value of hard work. I think this system of Work = Reward also taught me to love a clean house! 

Some of our friends never modeled or taught this value, this system, to their kids. I’m not sure if that was because they didn’t learn it from their own parents or if they thought that their kids were incapable or too precious to do chores. Maybe they thought their kids wouldn’t like them if they were made to clean a few toilets or dust the knick knacks. I find the opposite to be true for me. I admired my parents for the way they taught us practical skills, responsibility, a sense of ownership in our home, and a work ethic. It certainly never occurred to me to feel put out that I was expected to make my bed, sweep a floor, or start dinner for my family. 

Cleaning alongside mama made me feel like part of a team. I knew she appreciated my efforts and I also knew that getting everything checked off the To Do List was the only way we would be going to the mall or I would be allowed to have a friend sleep over. I learned that a clean house equaled freedom and happiness.

I recently learned that our Neighborhood Association has a rule against clotheslines. I found this out when an older neighbor tried to put one in her yard. While I don’t necessarily want to see my neighbors undies blowing in the breeze, I did think what a shame when I heard about the rule. I immediately thought about my mama’s penchant for sun-dried bed sheets. We had a perfectly good clothes dryer in the utility room off the carport, but sheets dried on the line smelled better than any perfumed dryer sheets we have today. Before I was tall enough to reach the clothesline myself, mama would tie a little pocketed apron around my waist and I would walk beside her and hand her the clothespins as she fastened the sheets to the line. Once I was tall enough, we both had our own aprons filled with wooden clothespins, and the job seemed to take half as long. To this day, I hate trying to fold fitted sheets or get them onto a mattress, but I loved the feeling of being a helper for my mama as she hung or retrieved clean sheets from the clothesline and I still adore the feeling of clean, crisp, first night sheets.

After I was married and while mama was still alive, I would get up with the sun on Saturday mornings and dive into my chores. For two or three hours I was like a whirlwind: vacuuming, mopping, cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, washing, drying and folding clothes, towels and sheets. The sooner I could get all of that done, the better, because I was most often heading straight to my parents’ house as soon as I was finished. I’d often arrive before my mama was finished with her own chores, so I would pitch in and help. As soon as she was done, we would head out to shop, have lunch, or take a swim in their pool. Thankfully, my husband enjoyed yard sales and visiting flea markets alone on Saturdays. Often I wasn’t home until nearly dinner time. Sometimes, I’d call and tell him to come on over because we were going out to dinner with my parents and my Grandma Cartner in Statesville and we wouldn’t make it home until ten o’clock at night.

After I lost my mother just shy of her sixty-second birthday when I was thirty-six, I continued the routine of Saturday morning chores. I watched our friends spend their Saturdays on the lake or at the ballfields for their kids’ games. I saw their Facebook plans to attend community events. I saw their weekend trips to the mountains and theme parks. Over and over I have wondered if and when they clean their houses. Seriously. So I threw that question out there on Facebook. Quite a few friends said, “It’s just not that important to me to have a clean house.” Others said they cleaned a room a day. (They must not be as tired as I am after work and cooking dinner.) Some said they had a maid who came once a week. That idea appealed to me the most, so I mentioned to my husband, Darryl, “Now that we don’t have a house payment, what do you think about hiring a maid to come once a week?” He laughed. He knows I would have to clean the day before she came because I couldn’t possibly let someone see my house when it wasn’t clean. 

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become a little more lax, but not much. Even though I see the value in a day off, there’s always Sunday. What can I say? I just feel better when the grit is off the floor and the tub is sparkling on Saturday afternoon. And I would rather clean the toilets than go to five different yard sales on Saturday morning with Darryl, so it all comes out in the wash, as they say. 

When and if I live to retire I will consider that room a day idea. And I haven’t ruled out the maid yet. For now, I’ll just keep on living by WWJD standards.