In olden times human beings had dirt floors in their
homes.
At least the poor people had dirt
floors; the rich had things like marble floors and servants to do the
cleaning.
You didn’t have to wash your
floor if you weren’t a servant assigned to do the job.
This was known as the golden age.
Progress being what it is, washing the floor eventually
became “woman’s work,” and the wife of the family got the job whether she
wanted it or not. Thus the tradition of
having your mother yell at you for tracking dirt on the floor began. Before that time, it didn’t matter if you
came into the house with muddy boots because the floors were made of dirt. The advent of wood floors was the cause of a great
deal of childhood trauma.
Many modern inventions are designed to make floor washing
easier or more efficient. Along with the
regular brooms, dustpans, mops, sponges, and buckets, we have various types of
vacuum cleaners, Swiffer WetJets, Swiffer Sweepers, carpet cleaners, and what
have you. Accompanying this equipment,
we have all kinds of cleaning agents that smell like everything from bleach to lemon
to pine. All of these have one thing in
common: they can be put away in a closet,
and you don’t have to think about them if you don’t want to.
This technique would work fine if it weren’t for one
thing: dust. Dust flies around the house and settles down
on whatever surface it can find, including the floors. The animal’s hair adds to the dust if you
have a pet. In the kitchen, you are
likely to have a couple of spots from dropped food or spilled coffee. In other words, the longer you keep the cleaning
equipment in the closet, the bigger the mess you will have.
When the mess reaches the height of your ankles, you’re
sneezing from the dust, and you can’t stand to look at it anymore, you decide
it’s time to take a deep breath, open the broom closet, and get to work.
You are immediately faced with two choices. You can do things the old-fashioned way, also
known as the hard way, or the modern way, also known as the lazy way. The old-fashioned way involves buckets, mops,
sponges, brooms, dustpans, vacuum cleaners, and muscle power. The modern method involves Swiffer Sweepers,
Swiffer Dusters, Swiffer WetJets, and other lightweight items that don’t include
using muscles, pushing semi-heavy machinery around, or bending over.
The old-fashioned way has one thing going for it: your floors get thoroughly clean. They had better get thoroughly clean because
of all the effort you have to put into the job.
The bucket full of water mixed with bleach or Lysol is heavy and has to
be schlepped from room to room. At the
same time, you must carry the mop you are using to put the mixture on the floor
and spread it around. If you haven’t
cleaned your floors in months, you will have to press hard with the mop and go
over the floor more than once to get all the dirt. If you are really zealous, you will get down
on the floor with a sponge and dig at especially stubborn spots. By the time you are finished, you will look
like this:
You are advised to use the old-fashioned way if you have an
afternoon to waste use up with miserable, backbreaking housework. You might be able to eat off your floors
afterward, but you’ll be too tired to try it.
I won’t even mention waxing floors. I won’t even think about it. What you don’t think about won’t hurt you.
The modern way produces a fine floor if you don’t have your
mother-in-law or some other fussbudget visiting you. With this method, there are no heavy buckets,
bleach, or Lysol. There is only a
long-handled thingamajig, to which you attach a hopefully absorbent, light piece
of electrostatic cloth. If you are “mopping”
the floor instead of only dusting it, you attach a piece of material that has
been soaking in cleaning stuff and smells just like it. If you are using a Swiffer WetJet, the cloth
sticks to the bottom. If you are only
dusting the floor, you quickly push the long-handled thingamajig around it, sometimes
turning it around so it will pick up all the dust and pet hair, not just some
of it. If you don’t feel like bending
over and picking up the stubborn things that won’t attach to the cloth, keep
turning it around until you catch it or push it into a dustpan. If you are using a Swiffer WetJet, ignore the
remaining dirt spots. They are part of
the modern housekeeping experience. After
you have been doing this for a while, you might end up looking like this:
Today’s apartment or house dweller often chooses the easier
way out of the household mess problem.
Of course, there will still be some dust on the floor, a few pet hairs
here and there, and maybe a drop on the kitchen floor, but you’ll get most of
it, anyway. The proper modern
housekeeper has learned to be content with this. You can always tell yourself that your home
looks like people live in it, which is more accurate than you think.
There is yet another option: hire someone else to clean your place. If you are paying someone else to do the
crummy jobs you don’t want to do, you can specify the old-fashioned method. After all, it isn’t YOUR back that is being
bent! The only problem with this is the
financial outlay. You get what you pay
for, though. If you want a clean home
and don’t want to do it yourself, pay a professional and shut up. Tips are also welcome in these cases if the person
has done an outstanding job and you want to get a reputation as a good customer
so they’ll return to continue doing your work for you.
