My current career as a domestic cleaner is
a family joke, visiting my house is a bit like entering a crime
scene. I'm myopic so don’t notice dust and can't see details on far away places like the floor. Sometimes (when a visitor is imminent) I attempt a speedy
swab across the decks and make things worse, I am effectively smearing dirt and consolidating
several piles of jumble which only
serves to draw attention to our sorry state.
It has long been apparent that any housework done in my own home is an unrewarding task, within hours the house reverts to it's default state of
messiness. This is in stark contrast to the home of an elderly couple where I visit
once a week for vacuuming duties, their home is identically neat from one
week to the next - they leave exactly 12 crumbs under the dining table as a check that I do actually push their Hoover around - but nothing else shifts or changes. I imagine them living
in this house, gently reading the papers or a book until it is time to move to another
room, drifting through the house in a manner that won’t dislodge any hair or
skin flakes and thus cause dust.
I have met another artist who earns her living as a cleaner, we’d both
like our homes to be neater but are equally ineffective at achieving this, we suggested that perhaps it would be more interesting if we did each other's housework*. The problem with this plan is that it still involves time spent doing housework, we will call the idea Art and file under ‘conceptual’.
*actually I refuse to own the housework, my house is shared with another who deserves equal opprobrium for the mess in which we find ourselves
*actually I refuse to own the housework, my house is shared with another who deserves equal opprobrium for the mess in which we find ourselves
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