About a month ago, a bottle of aftershave slipped from my husband’s hand and dropped to the bathroom floor, smashing into pieces. It took him half an hour to dispose carefully of the glass and to clean cologne off the tiles, using a carry-cart of cleaning tools and a ton of muttered swearing.
The hallway reeked of fumes, singeing our olfactory glands possibly forever. The pall - a top note of sandalwood with a base of isopropanol - lingered for days. It’s possible that birds swerved away from our house during this time, or even fell out of the sky in a stupor. I developed a mild headache whenever I spent time in the bathroom. It was all very disappointing and expensive and if the spokesmodel for Chanel’s Allure Homme had casually walked by, I’d have smacked him right in the snoot.
Yet, since then, if I open the cupboard under the kitchen sink and reach for the dustpan and brush, something weird happens.
I feel oddly alert, and even sexy. The brush must have soaked up some of the aftershave but not the harshly chemical part, so when I pull it out I’m enveloped in something fruity, pleasantly sweaty, and spiced with Madagascan black pepper and Tonka beans, whatever those are. This feels extremely intimate. It’s as if my nose is planted somewhere close to a pulse point: behind a masculine ear, at the base of a throat, under a shirt.
According to Chanel this is the unmistakable scent of a charismatic and determined man; a man who knows what he wants and apparently, that’s me, in my frayed jeans, cross as a wasp, about to sweep a disgusting trail of toast and biscuit crumbs from a stickier-than-it-should-be kitchen floor.
It goes against every fibre of my being and challenges many of my long-held beliefs but despite the pain this brings me, it’s impossible to fib. In that tiny and unobserved moment, housework turns me on.
Thank God every moment passes and the only thing you can count on is change. Once I’ve slung the dustpan back under the sink I go back to normal, which is what I want, and the world deserves.
I don’t have the brain space or bandwidth to feel flirty in the daytime. There are bedrooms to air, bathrooms to disinfect, and did you know my son is allergic to dust-mites? Have you ever had to seal pillows and a duvet in special zip-up bags ordered from Australia, hot-wash the hell out of the sheets, then vacuum the curtains and the tops of picture frames? Trust me, if this is how you spend some of your life, the only way you want your Tonka beans is refried in a tortilla.
I’m not even that good at domestic work, even though I spend a considerable portion of my waking hours doing it. The tidying thing is easy enough and I can make a room seem appealing but really, anyone can drape a throw on a sofa and smack a cushion into a three-cornered hat. I’m sure a chimp could do it.
It’s the cleaning side of my skillset that’s seriously ropy. I’ve managed my own household for the best part of 20 years (I think I last shared a flat in 2005) and not once in that time have I ever cut through the cloudy white scum on a shower screen. That stuff is baked hard - it’s tougher to slough off than a heat shield on a spacecraft. I’ve only ever seen my mother achieve this, doggedly, and with almost scientific attention to detail. What I take from this is that I haven’t my mother’s fortitude, and she should probably work for NASA.
As a plumber’s daughter I’ve unblocked many a plug. Unspeakable things lie beneath our baths, sinks and showers (jellied skin cells, anyone?). But have I ever truly and properly cleaned a toilet? I feel like I have, but according to The New York Times I should be reducing the level of water in the bowl before beginning to clean it. This was news to me, and which is why The New York Times is a beacon of deeply reported journalism whose writers are the heartbeat of democracy. As well as being arseholes.
For the toilet bowl cleaner to do its work in sanitizing the porcelain, it needs to be undiluted, so you have to drain the water in the toilet.
The New York Times, December 2023
My washed towels are almost always crunchy. There are fist-sized fluffballs in every corner of every room. We have a fussy wrought-iron chandelier in the living room - not our taste at all, but who has the time to replace it? And between its curlicues are persistent spiderwebs, some baggy and old, some taut and new. I think I mopped the floorboards a month ago, but it might be longer. Don’t ask me about the oven.
If something threatens to catch fire, I’m attentive and reliable. I routinely clean out the lint trap in the dryer. I remove and wash the grilles behind the stovetop, and wipe the build-up of thick, yellow cooking fat from the vent. But the crumbs in the cutlery drawer? The limescale in the shower head? The unspeakable inch beneath the fridge, possibly a nightclub for mice? If it’s not going to kill us, I rarely get around to it.
The cat has sliced the edges of the sofa, and likes to claw her way up the curtains, sitting on the rails and nibbling the upper folds. There are visible pockets of stuffing where the top seams used to be. Meanwhile the dog has ripped into the lining under the sofa, making himself an opening to climb inside, where presumably he lies on the wooden frame. In a fit of the zoomies a couple of months ago, he knocked over my favourite floor lamp and smashed one of its irreplaceable glass globes. If you have pets, you’re never going to win at housekeeping.
Similarly, if you have a family. If the laundry hamper is somehow missing from the landing outside the bedrooms, my people will throw their clothes or wet towels into an imaginary one - the space where the hamper should be. I mean, it’s the floor, in strictly empirical terms; but not if we all pretend it isn’t. I don’t remember signing this agreement.
Lord knows, I’m not perfect either. There are tubs all over the house full of things I don’t recognise and haven’t the energy to classify. Power cords without appliances. Appliances without power cords. Old documents, schoolbooks and half-empty notebooks, piles of magazines that must have had my writing in them, else why would I keep them? None of these things have value outside the house and are useless to give away. But I can’t seem to bin them. I don’t know what the psychopathology of this is, but it can’t be good.
Then there are things that should be kept for sentimental reasons but make me vaguely sad (a baby basket, kindergarten art, the silk slippers my daughter wore to our wedding, my son’s tiny first pair of Red Band gumboots). Things that are not needed presently but might be wanted someday (Lego; art supplies; reef shoes). Things that need expertise to fix or restore (damaged leatherware; raggedy mid-century chairs; a dodgy oil heater that clicks).
Then there’s the office-wear I haven’t worn in years - pussy-bow blouses, patent heels and pencil skirts in an uptight, high-maintenance style now out of favour since Covid. Again, who would wear these now? The clutter is everywhere, but because I’m afraid to confront it (sorting it would take hours - days - months) I just clear a path through. None of this adds up to a well-managed house, and yet I am the house-manager. I’m better at other things, but I’ve forgotten what they are. So, I keep going, because of the dust, the mould, the skin cells.
Still, there are consolations.
I like the tide marks I leave on the rugs once I’ve vacuumed them. I like the two low hooks by the door - one for each school bag. I like how the house feels heavy with the scented lilies from the grocer at Karori Mall. I like stocking fresh toilet rolls in the basket in the bathroom - it suggests abundance, of an affordable kind.
I like clicking the new date and the day of the week on the retro calendar clock each morning, before everybody else comes downstairs. I like sitting on the bricks outside sipping coffee in the half-dark, just after I’ve made the kids’ lunches and before I get dressed.
I like seeing the dog leash sitting in a ready circle by the door - it implies that later, I’ll have somewhere to go. I like folding back the bedding, airing it Euro-style, and raising the windows an inch. I like opening the linen cupboard to see all the folded squares and the rolled-up towels like fat sausages. In the evenings, I like going around closing the curtains and turning on all the lamps. It’s retro. It’s basic. It’s unfashionable, but it’s true.
I read somewhere that despite our resentment of the unfairness of housekeeping - the burden, mostly, of women - there’s still pleasure to be had in a job well done. That pleasure doesn’t come my way very often (seriously, nobody check my oven). But there certainly is pride to be had in being the person who notices, the person who smooths the way, the person who thinks about the comfort of others. Housekeeping is many things - a performance, a battleground, a drudge, a bitter pill - and there are commanding arguments to be made about the cost to those who do it.
But for now, let me bury my face in its goodness, and breathe in deeply its smell.
The peerless
combines her feminism with her housekeeping in a way that’s fully realised, compared to some (well, to me). I read this piece of hers this week, and it inspired me. I hope you enjoy it, too.
Alan! I looked up WD40 and it looks like it could lift off anything, including my eyebrows 😆. I’m sorry you were punished as a boy for such an easy mistake. Do you remember Poison and Kouros from the eighties? My Lord, none of us had taste
Man you make me laugh and thank goodness you leave the fridge and have the fluff in the corners too! I often worry that, should I die in my sleep, people will have to clean (out) my house!