Todd's Cavalcade of Whimsy

I work from home, so it falls on me to try to keep order and cleanliness when it comes to the house. Unfortunately, I am nowhere near being any good at it or "caring" about it. I'm not so much a "cleaner" as I am the guy who picks up just enough that, on a quick scan, the house appears clean. But on any sort of closer inspection, my feeble facade breaks down. Thankfully it's often cloudy here in Portland, because when the sun comes out, one can easily see that there's so much dust covering the wood floors that it looks like a shot from the Mars rover. Thank God for inclement weather.

But I do my best to keep things in order and to maintain a semblance of cleanliness. And by "my best," I mean that I don't do my best at all. I have learned quickly that housework is not only mind-numbingly redundant and dull, but also not that rewarding.

I've also learned a few more things. My eyes have been opened to bizarre rituals and secrets that housewives have been keeping for years. Little rules that are never spoken out loud; they're just "known." And when I have violated these rules, I get looks of bewilderment and curiosity from my wife that seem to say, "How can you not know that you're not supposed to use 409 to mop the floors?" (My response, by the way, was, "Because I'm a man and shouldn't be cleaning." Not good. (P.S. -- "Purple Nurples" are every bit as horrifically painful now as they were when we were kids.)) So here's some of the more random rules I've learned about keeping a clean house.

Apparently there are finer distinctions than just "good towels" and "bad towels." Obviously I know enough to not mop up that spilled Fanta with a bath towel. And I even know there are "kitchen wash cloths" and the rags you use to wash the car. What I did not know was that were sub-categories of "nice kitchen washcloths" and "nicer kitchen washcloths." One of the first unwritten rules I encountered was that there are washcloths that you can do dishes or wipe the table with, but you may not use that same washcloth to wipe the counters. Because, as I was told, "We don't want to get them full of cleaning chemicals, do we?" (Bit of advice for men here: Don't answer rhetorical questions. Ever. See the "Purple Nurple" comment above.) So first lesson learned: not all washcloths can actually be used to wash things. Check.

Then there's the issue of clothes. To me, there are two states of clothes: "clean" and "dirty." Sure, dirty clothes is a pretty broad definition, going from "picking them up only with tongs and a HAZMAT suit" to "I can still wear it -- you can hardly see the stain." What I was not aware of, however, was a bizarre and undefined third state of clothing: the "Not Clean but Not Dirty" state. In this state, according to my wife, clothes are not clean enough to be hung up or put away with the clean clothes, but are not dirty enough to go in the hamper with the dirty clothes. At first I thought this was a joke. "If a shirt is so filthy that by merely hanging it up near a clean shirt is going to soil the clean shirt, then it's dirty" was my rationale. Apparenly that was wrong. But what's even more peculiar is that the place for the "Not Clean but Not Dirty" pile is in the middle of the floor, where we proceed to walk over them for the next week, ensuring that they would indeed become filthy. (Cue: "The More You Know" song...)

Another thing I've learned about is the vast conspiracy foisted upon us by the makers of dryer sheets. Yes, dryer sheets. You see, whenever I popped something in the dryer, I foolishly would use a whole pre-portioned dryer sheet from the box. Now, however, I've learned that in order to scam us into over-buying these sheets, the good folks at Bounce and Snuggle have made these dryer sheets larger than they really need to be. Somehow the fabric softener industrial complex aims to control us like puppets by forcing us to make our socks way too springtime fresh. Or something. I still really haven't figured out the logic behind this, but nevertheless I have been instructed to only use part of a dryer sheet at a time by tearing them in half first. (One more PSA for the road: It's probably for the best to keep a response of, "Hey -- you can do it however you want when you wash the clothes" to yourself.)

Live and learn, I suppose. I'm guessing I'm not the first husband to go through this educational process. If I had to patiently explain to her which was the positive and negative posts on a car battery, I guess I can calmly listen to the subtle (read: nonexistent) differences between a serving spoon and a spoon that's just a really big spoon, and why they belong in completely different drawers.

But rest assured, if I ever get really ticked off, I can always gain my revenge by using an entire dryer sheet.