CLEAN WORK OR CLEANING WORK

Clean work sounds like something you do in a clean room.

Or an office.

Wherever you don’t get dirty.

Those jobs come with a number of names: clerk, assistant, manager, department head.

It’s the sort of work where you get up, get out of bed, drag a comb across your head.

Cleaning work, housekeeping, is different.

How different? Vacuums that show the dirt different.

A vacuum with a bag fills up and you change it out for another.

The ones with a clear canister show the horror of filth you’ve been living in, then you empty it in the outside trash can that creates a dust-plume every time you put anything else in there.

Now you get to wear the filth, the skin flakes and dust mites, you took out of the house.

Clean Work Before Cleaning Work

What’s the point of pre-cleaning you ask?

So you don’t look like you live like savages, even if you do.

I read an account explaining why royals in the Middle Ages moved from castle to castle.

Because of the sewage overflow. The people crapped and peed everywhere until the stench got overwhelming.

Then they moved to their next estate while the castle cleaners got to work.

Joke Time:

A traveling salesman got stuck in the country and knocked on a farmer’s door asking for a place to stay the night.

The farmer said he had one bed so they’d have to share.

After they tucked in for the night:

Farmer: Ever play country football?

Salesman: No, how do you play?

Farmer: Simple. (He strained out two farts.) I’m ahead 2 – 0.

The two men fart around until the score is 12 – 9 with the salesman leading.

The farmer is bearing down mightily and cuts loose with a load worthy of one of his cows.

Salesman: Did you do what I think you did?

Farmer: Yep. I shit the bed.

Salesman: Now what?

Farmers: That means it’s halftime. We change sides.

The Important Cleaning

If you have company and encourage them to take off their shoes in the house you don’t want to send them home with dirty socks.

The same goes for visiting toddlers. Momma doesn’t want to see dirty baby feet.

If older folks in your life have one responsibility, if you could give them one, make it a clean house.

I think of that while I sweep, vacuum, and mop; while I move things, dust surfaces, and hide clutter.

My specials know they are valued when they look under the couch and find no dust bunnies.

They know love when they can’t write their names in the dust not covering a cabinet.

What’s that smell? It’s not old trash because there’s a new bag.

Good cleaning work done to the point of clean room clean is a fresh start, a restart.

Keeping up gives everyone a chance to reflect on a shared future.

Hand me the Windex please.