Two weeks without my usual routine of keeping Josie two or three days every week and time was weighing so heavily on my hands that yesterday I found myself cleaning baseboards and applying Liquid Gold to the wainscoting and furniture.
An unhappy side effect of this isolation thing is that we don't have friends over to dinner. And having folks over used to send us into a frenzy of cleaning and cooking. We counted on this impetus to keep the house in reasonable shape. Now, a perfunctory bit of vacuuming when the dog hair begins to float about and some equally perfunctory dusting have been the norm. With predictable results. Also there is an appalling amount of mildew, what with the wet weather we've been having. So it was time.
The thing about baseboards is they're way down there. My back will only put up with a limited amount of that kid of bending so I do my baseboard cleaning the same way I weed the garden--sit and scoot.
It's very silly looking and the getting back up part isn't pretty. But the house is beginning to be cleaner--once you get started on an endeavor like this, the clean stuff just highlights what else needs attention.
Josie and her support staff are coming for Family Dinner Up tonight and starting Monday, we'll be back to what passes for normal--with me doing the voices for her animals and pretending to be another three-year-old playing in The Room. Pancakes and tea parties and a new fantasy figure from Aunt Fay--and for a day I can ignore those baseboards that haven't yet been cleaned.
5 comments:
When I do gardening, that's how I do it too.
Good for you...do you hire out too? I've got the horrible white painted baseboards. And every once in a while I notice the handle on the refrigerator has a grey tint to it...I am surprised every time. Who had dirty hands and opened it, and it has only been me living here. Getting up is definitely something I'm working on. Still need a piece of furniture to prop myself up with. Glad that at least it's possible that way!
Yes, you are right - company to dinner - and trips!- those were the housework motivators. I’d rather be with Josie! Was thinking that a physical therapist I know - when her children had to be at the clinic for some reason - would pay them a pittance to clean the baseboards - that worked! Xo
I learned how to clean from my mother, "the original Mrs. Clean". My first lesson was as a five year old, and it was how to scoot around and clean the baseboards all of which were painted white. Interesting to look back and recognize how she taught me by increasingly difficult tasks until I was in charge of dismantling the chandelier and carefully washing and drying all the chimneys and dangling prisms after dusting light bulbs and stationary parts. And then, it was all to be put back together again.
Hmm, Josie's at just the right size to clean baseboards. . . And she's always asking if she can help . . .
Post a Comment