A Woman's Work is Never Done

I swear I have the dustiest house in North America.

Not that I am one to dust on a regular basis, but when I do get to it, I manage to enfilthiate (my word) dust cloths at three times the rate my mother ever did. And it seems that the minute I finish, the dust reappears.

Mom made us dust when we were kids. She had unfilled travertine tops on a lot of the furniture, which means dust-holding holes. We had to dust every week, and we were admonished to DUST THE BASEBOARDS as well. I never remember those dust cloths picking up much at all. It seemed like a wasted effort to me. I never saw a dust bunny during my childhood.

Not so in my own house. I live in a colonial style house that has colonial moldings, which are much dustier than the Los Angeles mid-century modern simple, rounded baseboards I grew up with. I also have six-panel doors, dust hoarders all, as opposed to the blond wood smooth doors in my home of origin. Mom also hated knicknacks--"Just more to clean"--so we had few of those to REMOVE AND DUST (of course, being kids, we kind of flicked the dust cloth over and around them). I, however, have "tablescapes" on every flat surface, with lots more tchotchkes than Mom ever had. (Back then, though, we had ashtrays everywhere. It was the sixties, after all.)

My mom was a champion cleaner, at least until she started working full-time. She'd nearly rip the clothes off your body when you came through the door ("Give me that blouse! I'm doing light wash-and-wear!"). Nobody had whites like hers. She and the occasional maid, Homako, would go through the house like a dose of salts. They'd wash the windows every month, wash the woodwork, vacuum everything. It was amazing.

Mom still makes me clean the bathtub and shower every single time I use it at her house. Even though she can't climb the stairs and inspect the bathroom, I am still very careful about it. Her regimen includes using a squeegee and then rags to dry the remaining water from the glass doors and tile walls.

Once my sister and I were nine or ten, though, and Mom worked, the story changed. Although she never let us touch the washing machine, we had to fold the dried laundry. And iron the pillowcases. Vacuum the house. And, of course do the aforementioned dusting.

As you might expect, we lied a lot about whether we had done our chores. We couldn't see the point in doing all that work every single week. When we did do it, it was done halfheartedly.

For the last thirty years, though, I've had to do my own housework, and boy, has my attitude changed. I had to educate my husband on the virtues of "deep vacuuming" (which means moving all the furniture and using the edge tool to get the corners, and rooting out the dust bunnies from their gambling dens and whorehouses, or so he says). I never forced my kids to do much, either, because I became so particular about how things were done (big mistake). Yet, my daughter Julie, as a college freshman, called me one day and said, "Mom, you've done it. You should be proud. I am dying to clean the dormitory bathroom." Obviously, she didn't go to BYU, which had the best janitorial staff I've ever seen in any institution.

So here I am, spending nearly all day today dusting and vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms. And I'll do it again, and again. But I do have to admit, when I glance around that clean, dust-free living room with its gleaming mahogany tables and porcelain vases, I do get a sense of accomplishment. Sick, huh?