Member-only story
Family and Love
It’s Cleaning Day and I Love It!
The bric-a-bracs, the figurines, the knick-knacks, and omigod, the books. The groaning shelves of books, a mountain of hardcover and…
When I was younger, cleaning house was a chore I did not look forward to. Once a month my wife would wrestle me to the ground, trap me in a scissor lock, and force me to promise that, yes, today I will dust and clean. I’d then mope and sulk for an hour while trying to adjust to the awful reality that the stuff we owned would not magically shake off dust and dirt.
In one sense, cleaning today should be even worse. We own more stuff now, and especially more stuff that is hard to clean. The bric-a-bracs, the figurines, the knick-knacks, and omigod, the books. The groaning shelves of books, a mountain of hardcover and paperbacks, and each one will need to be removed from its shelf so that it and the shelf may be wiped down.
No wonder that some men have packed a duffel bag and gone to a shack in the woods, there to live the life of a hermit and never contemplate cleaning again. They may sometimes mist up at the thought of their dear abandoned families, but the memory of cleaning days will bring a shudder and strengthen their resolve to never return.
