My new kitchen floor

I love/hate the new ceramic tile in my kitchen. I love it because it looks great and the varied color hides the dirt, etc. I hate it because it hides the dirt. You see, over the last few years, I've become less obsessive about cleaning. I relied on the "ick" factor rather than the calendar to tell me when the floor needed to be mopped. With this new tile, the "ick" factor doesn't exist. You don't see spills. You don't see dust collecting in the corners. It really does hide all of signs that my old white linoleum used to give when it needed to be cleaned. The result is that only realize how truly disgusting the floor is when I clean it and see the results on the mop and/or swiffer.

Let me give you a little housekeeping history. My maternal grandmother was a stay at home mom. She was very involved in her church and community, but her number one job was feeding, clothing, and caring for her family and their home. She was an amazing cook and seamstress. I remember ironing sheets and pillow cases at her house, and I don't think she was just teaching me how to iron. I could be wrong about this, but I think she really did iron sheets.

My mother usually had at least one part-time job, not because she wanted to work, but because we needed the money. In addition to keeping her own home clean and beautiful, she often cleaned for other people. My father was an only child and had served in the Navy so he was also taught to clean. And my parents taught us to clean. Several years ago, my brother and his friend volunteered to clean the kitchen for my sister-in-law. For most men, that would mean doing the dishes and wiping off the counters. If I remember correctly, their day included scrubbing the walls with a bleach solution and alphabetizing the refrigerator. I remember one day when my dad told me to clean the bathroom and them come outside and help with whatever project he was doing. More than an hour later, he came back in to see why I hadn't come out yet, and I was still cleaning the bathroom. I don't remember for sure, but I think I was cleaning the light fixtures at that point. (OK, there is a possibility I was being more thorough than usually because I didn't want to go outside.)

As you can see, I have a lot of cleaning history. But my life is very different from that of my mother or my grandmother. I work full-time. I am self-employed, so with all the business side of things, I'm usually working a lot more than 40 hours a week. I also have chronic health problems. I could make myself sick trying to keep a house that my grandmother would appove of, or I can live with the "not as clean as I'd like it to be" and have a little sanity and less stress in my life. Yes, sometimes, like with the kitchen floor, things do get a little out of hand, but it hasn't killed me yet. And yes, it might bug me if I saw someone else's house looking like this. But the truth is I really am happier when I'm not so freaked out about how the house looks. The nice part is that I live alone and don't have a lot of people over, so I rarely feel the need to clean as part of "image management".

Those of you readers that are in my meal exchange group don't have to worry. I do clean the kitchen before I cook the food that I share with you. Not the bleach the walls and alphabetize the refrigerator clean, but clean enough that I'm not sending disgusting germs to your home.

I'd better wrap this up now, so I can go clean the floors. Yeah for Saturdays. Without them, nothing would get done.

They say that cleanliness is next to godliness, and to a certain point I agree. I also think that sometimes, like in the story of Mary and Martha, we need to do less cleaning and cooking and detail work and take the time to be with God.