It’s Not Easy Being Clean

When I moved into the house almost ten years ago, I ordered a large wardrobe from Ikea. It helped solve the lack-of-closet-space issue that many houses of this era have. If our home was a person, it would be getting its pension and planning its shopping trips for senior’s days. 

On the weekend, we hired two high-school boys eager to make some cash by hauling things around for us. We called them “child labour” but we paid them like adults. They worked hard without complaint, filling a dumpster to the brim and moving big pieces around inside. It’s a funny thing about teenage boys. They can seem so mature for their ages until they prove they’re still kids. Example: I asked, “When do you guys want to take a lunch break”? One responded in a serious and innocent way, “Whenever it’s ready”. Derek and I smiled at each other. I took their orders for subs, brought them back and we all ate together.

They took that monolithic wardrobe out the back door and into the garage where it will be dismantled because it won’t otherwise fit through the doors into our basement. Derek asked me to come in and Swiffer around before they moved the rest of the furniture. What I saw was an embarrassment and a horror: ten years of dust bunnies, dropped coins and lost pieces of paper. The dust ball I collected was like a medium-sized rabbit. Terrifying. What’s worse, one of the young lad’s mothers is a cleaner for an insurance company. The woman owns a wall-washer because she wants to! She’s a clean freak. My bunny would have made her faint.

But what’s a person supposed to do? The wardrobe is immobile when it’s in use and took the two lads and help from Derek to get it out of the house. Does anybody really expect me to empty and move it regularly? It’s not as simple as pulling out a bed or vacuuming behind a couch. It’s just not realistic. Unless you’re the kind of person who owns a wall-washer, I suppose.