Sunday, December 8

Theories of Relativity: i

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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 do a speedy swab across the decks, merely making 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 to 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.

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

12 comments:

  1. I would be afraid of cleaning your fridge, having previously read what you keep in there.... but I might do your cleaning in exchange for another screen print!
    Sx

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    1. We left the maggot fridge behind in the Lovely House, this fridge just contains a lot of smelly cheese - but it doesn't hum Scarlet

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  2. My relativity is relatively similar. I used to leave my desk at work neat, clean, and organized at the end of each work day. At home, not so much...

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  3. Comment crash with Mr Lax.... that's going to make a mess.
    Sx

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  4. No problem, I'll tidy it up!

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  5. I don't mind the lived-in tidy look.It's the grubbiness I hate.Dust and cat fur, mostly.

    Makes note to ask Mr. Lax to pop in here some time...

    Oh! It's lovely to see you back here!

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    1. Thank you dinah, it's nice to brush off the cobwebs around this place

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  6. Lovely to see you on the blogging front again.

    I live with a man who prefers to keep the food for the poultry in the dining room (as yet I am not asked to lay places for them at the table) and who has set up his potting area in the balcony which involves trecking through the house in boots whether arriving by the front or the back door.
    He has refused with contumely my suggestion of a sort of dumb waiter to raise the plants from ground to balcony level.

    A brave woman comes in to muck us out and has been trained not to touch papers or books - which cuts down the surfaces to be cleaned considerably.

    She compensates by polishing windows to a high gloss and screaming abuse at my husband as he passes with yet another plant to be repotted.

    I have learned some interesting Spanish words.

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    1. Thank you. x
      Your man would be very at home in our house then. I love the sound of the sweary woman.

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  7. Housecleaning?

    That is what houseboys are for.

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