To Clean or not?

 What is it about cleaning? 

We had to make our beds when we were kids, but my mother wasn't on us to make them regularly. Maybe she was at first. As I recall, those early days had an almost ceremonial flavor. If you knew how to make a bed with hospital corners in our house, you'd moved through a rite of passage. My Aunt Elly was involved; she was more methodical than my mother, so when we slept over at the Kelly's, I recall standing at the foot of my cousins' twin beds for more instruction. Her sharp, clear directives reinforced my mother's more tentative delivery. These exercises were all good, but I also attribute my father's demonstrations, fresh as he was from his war service, to my eventual mastery of the skill.  To this day, under pressure, I still know how to bounce a quarter from the taut corners of a bed. 

Making beds was a two-sister affair that had a positional aspect to it. Participants were required to call out whether they wanted to be on the inside or outside.  I usually ended up wedged up against the wall while my older sister, Beth, wiggled her index finger toward my torso and menacingly chanted the words, Skinny Ginny! Laughter accompanied much of the cleaning we did when we were kids. We got into the habit of calling out our preferred clean-up tasks towards the end of supper. We called it hoseying in those days, and it was fun. Wash, Dry, and Finishing Touches were the three categories, and who called out what first determined the flavor and quality of the evening.

I don't know which came first, the bed-making lessons or Mom's tutorials on dusting and polishing furniture. They may have come in the same season. It would be nice if she were still around so I could ask her. All these years later, I can still see the little white cotton dust cloths she cut from old diapers. I remember her instructions on using a different, clean cloth for polishing. My parents loved old things, and one of my mother's prized possessions was a spinning wheel with its wooden treadle intact. I don't know if my mother had yet discovered the work of Maria Montessori, but I can attest to the efficacy of her method. Polishing those multiple spokes became a significant accomplishment of my early childhood.

Despite all this impressive early training, the word haphazard won the day regarding chores. Don't get me wrong; my mother had standards. The front of the house, the living room, and the den were always immaculate. The truth is, my mother loved to read more than she liked to clean. Happily, that trait rubbed off on us. We always took the directive to tidy our rooms with a grain of salt. An aerial view of cleaning time at our house would reveal a houseful of people in their respective rooms with their noses in a book. 

We'd go back to the bedroom we three shared, sit on our beds, and read. She'd sit at the kitchen table with coffee and a pile of books and do the same. In hindsight, it would have been more accurate for her to gleefully call out Girls, it's reading time! 

We were too little to run the vacuum, but it often sprawled on the living room rug like a family pet. My mother was proud and joked that she had purposely left it there. If anyone popped in unexpectedly, it would suggest she had just finished vacuuming or knew it needed doing. Mom was no fool regarding shame-based attitudes toward house cleaning, yet she did not consider housekeeping as the apex of her existence. 

Most importantly, for me and my sisters all book lovers, she had her priorities straight. 

To clean or not?