The entire time I have been working the screwy afternoon shift, it seems there's no energy left in the tank when I stumble home. As a result, I make a full confession that I'm not the housekeeper I was at one time - but not due to lack of ability.
Okay, you're probably thinking, "A bachelor? Cleaning a bachelor pad?" I certainly got yelled at enough over my formative years for being, for lack of a better word, a pig. When I finally moved out on my own at the young age of 27, I decided I would be more of a cleaner than a "messer".
I remember starting out on my other cousin's house, beginning with the furniture arrangements ("Shouldn't the couch be resting against the wall?"), but then it ended up being general housecleaning. I'll never forget being in a panic just after Christmas, when my ex-girlfriend & her family were to pay a visit for a hastily-arranged holiday dinner. I managed to get the house spic & span through four hours of heavy cleaning, but it ended up taking its toll. And of course, when the cousin came home, she started asking where everything was. Turned out to be a trite embarassing.
When I lived at my Grandma's house, I kept the house clean as she would have, and it drew raves from everyone in the family. There was a sense of family pride in that house along with a lot of history, and that house never functioned as a bachelor pad before. Call it an appreciation of tradition, but I did my best.
The ex-girlfriend's house was a total loss thanks to the population there (two kids, the cats, the iguanas), and the apartment didn't count due to lack of space. The nine months I was there, it looked like a warehouse because I never bothered to unpack much of the stuff.
Flash forward to the house I've been in since 2003. This morning marked the first cleaning of the kitchen crevices in nearly two years. You'd swear I never lived in my Grandma's house. Questions were raised by the roommate about lack of cupboard space to place his food. Now there's no room for complaint: eighty percent of the boxes were junked due to expiration dates (the Science Experiment Society said "no thank you"), and the cans will be next. No one around here eats pineapple anyway, fresh or not.
Back to the question posed before: why clean it when it's a bachelor pad? Again, a matter of pride. As you know from reading, the landlord loves us here because we take good care of the place. Come again?
But with the shift back to days taking place at work beginning Sunday, I'll have more control over my day. And there won't be an excuse left. Family pride from the past will show from me no matter how the living quarters are classified.
