Tue, August 5, 2003

Tidying

I read a lovely book by Martin Amis called Time's Arrow which was told from the perspective of a doppelganger who lived within the main character, but saw his entire life backwards. (For example, the man works as a doctor but our narrator is horrified to see him ripping stitches out of patients, shoving bullets into them and rolling them out the door.) Good book. I would love to see the messing/tidying process this way. I understand entropy and all that, but I still can't figure out how everything gets piled all over the place.

Vacuuming

This used to be my favorite, but my current place has all hardwood floors, so I have one small rug I can vacuum and that's it. Hardly worth the noise. I should follow Dave Barry's suggestion and just drag a 2x4 around to get those nice lines. I still think a riding vacuum cleaner (like a riding lawn mower) would be awesome.

Dusting

This is probably the most rewarding in terms of effort-to-results ratio, but my passion for it wanes around the time I realize how many things I have to pick up and put back. When I start, the room appears to have a trinket here or there, but by the time I'm through I could swear I've moved a veritable glass menagerie. My patent for a bowling alley-style contraption to lift everything straight up and put it right back? Still pending.

Windexing

This comes with those nice little squeaks that remind me of listening to the NCAA basketball tournament on the radio, plus that tingly aroma that is probably not good for you but it really says "something's getting clean!" I think it's interesting that there's Windex which is pretty much glass cleaner, and there's 409, which touts itself as a "glass and surface cleaner." Like, why would anybody buy Windex over 409? Except I totally do.

Doing the Dishes

Argh. Doing the dishes is a pain. No matter how often you do it, they always seem to be piling up. I've planned many a dinner around what dishes are still clean to avoid the issue. I would definitely cook more often if I had a dishwasher. (And I don't mean the appliance; I mean the Puerto Rican kid who wears a scruffy apron and his T-shirt sleeves rolled up.)

Laundry

After years of lugging clothes into the sweltering basements of dorms and apartment buildings, I've solved the laundry problem by taking mine to an adorable fluff-n-fold place run by an elderly Korean couple. It's not that much more expensive, and there's something uniquely satisfying about receiving your thong underwear meticulously folded down to the size of a postage stamp. It reminds me of Phil Hartman's Anal Retentive Chef from Saturday Night Live. And that's a good thing.

Scrubbing

Scrubbing is the worst. It appeals to the obsessive-compulsive in me, and it's a great meditative activity because your mind can just wander, but it can be really thankless and there's never a real good stopping point. You could always scrub a little more. It makes me long for the House Of Tomorrow from the old Warner Brothers cartoons, where you press a button and all the walls are replaced with shiny new ones.

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