I've never made any secret of the fact that I am an indifferent housekeeper at best. I put off cleaning the bathrooms for as long as I can possibly justify delaying. I don't vacuum as much as I should. I don't dust until I can actually see the dust piling up on the top of the bookcase and the back of the desk. I have an ingrained ability to ignore clutter. I've lived in this house for over three years, and I've never washed the windows. So I'd never claim to keep a scrupulously clean house, nor would I say that I have really high standards.
However, after this weekend I will never feel bad about my housekeeping skills or lack thereof again. Allow me to explain. My mom has discovered the joys of freecycling and is on some list exchange that delivers approximately 8 gajillion emails per day with one free thing after another. While I fully support freecycling, I find the stuff that people try to recycle sometimes borders on the ridiculous. No, you don't need to post each 25 cent plastic report cover that you're trying to get rid of separately. However, my mom got some nice stools for her breakfast bar through this exchange, and she's forwarded other offers to me that looked pretty good. This time, she'd scored two bookcases from Scan, a furniture store she's always liked. This guy was moving to a smaller place and was downsizing, so he was giving away a six foot and seven foot bookcase. He even lived conveniently close to her house. Even though I had no idea where my mom was going to squeeze two bookcases in to her very crowded house, I agreed to help her pick them up.
Well, we got to this guy's house, and I was astounded at the horror that greeted us. He opened the door, and the stench practically knocked me back on to the porch. The whole house reeked of cat piss. I didn't actually see any cats, but he must have had 10 of them stashed somewhere to raise that level of stink. The carpet was totally trashed. Where it wasn't stained, it was coated in fur. It barely even looked like carpet anymore. There was stuff piled on every surface, and all the stuff had inches of dust on it. I was only in two of the rooms, but they were truly the two filthiest, smelliest, nastiest rooms I have ever been seen. My mom said the only time she'd ever seen worse was when she was a public health nurse in DC, when she visited a house that had been infested with roaches. The bookcases were not contaminated by the smell, thank goodness. Two very tall and very helpful German guys who had shown up for the entertainment unit the guy was giving away helped us get them down the stairs. Actually, they helped with the first one, and then tactfully suggested that they bring the second one down without my assistance. I think maybe I was in the way. As you might imagine, I had no objection to them doing the work. It wasn't that the bookcases were heavy - it's just that they were hard to maneuver in the crowded house and down the twisty stairs, and stinky cat guy was kind of clueless. We'd left John back at my mom's to save room in the car for the bookcases, and my mom has no upper body strength, so I was pretty much on my own until the Germans rode to the rescue.
The place is on the market, and I feel so bad for his real estate agent. On top of the dirt and the stench, there was sticker on the door leading to the deck saying it had been condemned and couldn't be used. Who is going to want a house that needs to be gutted, fumigated and have the deck rebuilt? Hey, it's just crying out for Jeff Lewis from Flipping Out! Except I don't think he's interested in crappy real estate in suburban Maryland.
I can tell you one thing for sure. I will not be beating myself up over my standards of cleanliness anymore.
It's all about perspective.