What Are You Good For?

Me, I'm good for a lot of things.

For instance, I know when and how to put a roll of toilet paper on the toilet paper dispenser. For me, this is a cinch. When is simple: when it runs out, you need more. How is a little trickier, but I'm still on top of it: I just pluck off the cardboard core from the old roll, discard it (an important step that no one in my family has managed more than about one time each), and slide the new roll onto the metal rod. I concede that some toilet paper dispensers are fiddlier than others, but after a little practice almost anyone can do it -- even the gender challenged.

I'm excellent at telling which weeds are compostable and which should be thrown out. Which are which? Dandelions are non-compostable. Their roots have an admirable quality to remain vigorous and life-sustaining for ages. Occasionally, I've dropped dandelion roots in dry, shady places only to find new leaves sprouting from them weeks later. Dandelions are as vigorous and tenacious as montbretia corms, and in my family, only I can spot them.

When it comes to mouse guts, half-eaten birds, cat puke and other cat-generated mess, I have an uncanny ability to identify and remove. Others can step right over (and occasionally into) these messes and not spot them. Once again, my vision, though nowhere near as acute as others', wins out. In a matter of speaking.

I'm a prime weather watcher. I know the best weather for drying clothes, and I can get the laundry washed and hung out in less than an hour. Other family members, when called upon to do the laundry, are all too prone to let a golden day of clear skies and warm breezes pass by, putting on the laundry as soon as the first storm clouds have sailed into the sky. The central heating system must then be used (at great expense) to dry the clothes which are draped over every radiator in the house.

I can perform small miracles. I can cook a very tasty meal from virtual scraps, in a kitchen where almost nothing has been put away where I can find it. Then, after said meal has been consumed by somewhat ungrateful children, I can hold (sort of) my tongue. Okay, I can't really, but let's just say that my whining is as nothing compared to what I'd really do if I didn't hold back. They have no idea what I've spared them.

Now I'm honor-bound to tell you what my husband can do besides going out to do a job he hates every single day just to feed his family. He can drive to the supermarket and shop. I can't do this. I don't know why I can't, but there it is. Maybe I'm too busy piddling with montbretia corms and dandelion roots or fiddling with the laundry. Maybe I've exhausted myself doing a loaves-and-fishes in the kitchen or gotten stressed out cleaning up cat messes and holding back from all the belly-aching I'd like to do. Whatever the reason, almost invariably my exhausted husband will ask, "What do we need from the store?" and I will tell him. And then he will amaze and delight me by going out to buy it.

Ah well. Either you've got it or you don't. What are you good for?

Frost Free

I wrote this for the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition held every year at this time. This is the third time I've entered, and the third time I've failed to place, but I will continue to enter anyway. I do it for my mother, who loved Erma Bombeck's weekly column, and for Erma herself, because she gave my mother so much happiness. And of course, for a shot at that $100 prize.

Just before Christmas last year, the refrigerator decided to take a vacation. Can’t say I blame it.

Things got out of hand when I went back to work in November. Instead of discarding the last inch of juice or milk, my husband and kids just put it back in the fridge. New items were bought and only partially consumed. Things soured, curdled and festered. Soon we were all holding our noses every time the fridge door was opened, and its shelves were full to bursting: I counted three bottles of catsup, four jars each of preserved peppers and olives, five tubs of margarine – and I’ve lost track of the mayonnaise, but let’s just say that if a football team wanted a week’s worth of sandwiches, we’d have been good to go.

My old-fashioned ideas about using up what we’ve got don’t work in this household. New stuff is routinely purchased before the old is finished. Understandably more popular than the old, it is quickly opened and dipped into. New stuff quickly becomes sort-of-new stuff, and soon we have old, sort-of-old, and sort-of-new-but-dipped-into stuff – and you stand a better chance of finding Penicillin than you do of finding jam without bread crumbs in it.

Before I went back to work, I always used up leftovers. I grated the last desiccated hunk of cheese into a casserole. Put the three-day-old leftover mashed potatoes into the bread dough. Recycled the dubious ratatouille into a pasta sauce. They say the only things you don’t want to see being made are laws and sausages, but you should have watched me fix dinner when the refrigerator needed cleaning.

Just before Christmas, I realized that the stuff inside the fridge was warmer than the stuff outside. All the milk had turned to yoghurt. Juice cartons were obviously swollen, and everything stank to high heaven. In the freezer, melted chocolate ice cream (one of seven tubs, all approximately 1/8th full) mixed with defrosted mackerel juices. Pumpkin puree bled into thawed peas.

I felt like weeping, throwing out all my carefully labelled soups, casseroles, and home-grown fruit and vegetables. Months earlier I’d filled all those containers in a fit of energetic optimism, picturing myself home from work in my smart, new business clothes, ready to cook the items I’d thoughtfully managed to defrost that morning. It’s the story of my life: I try to make things easier on myself and all I end up doing is stockpiling one hell of a mess.

Somewhere the refrigerator’s frost-free soul is basking in tropical warmth, sipping pina coladas, laughing at the thought of all those festering jam jars and 1/16th full milk cartons it no longer has to worry about.

I’m tempted to go and join it.

Clean-up Woman

Today is a red-letter day: I've just cleaned under the bed for the first time in about eight months. I'm not techno-savvy, so I cannot take a picture of this, but I happen to have found about two hundred somewhat expertly-folded origami cranes. Want them? They are yours! Just be among the first five people to comment on my blog; tell me what cleaning chores you particularly like -- and which ones you loathe -- and I'll send you a couple dozen cranes if you send me your address. Made from the finest washi, these cranes could easily be crafted into a mobile or other decoration. Add some glitter and shellack and you've got Christmas ornaments! Go on -- do it, for pity's sake! Take them off my hands! I'll even dust them for you!

A few years ago I remember reading an article about women who were addicted to cleaning. When questioned, these women admitted that they often cleaned their houses several times a week, even when they realized it wasn't really necessary. I found myself reading with a sort of horrified fascination that cleaning, for these ladies, was almost a raison d'etre -- that there was nothing they would rather do in their spare time. To this day, I can hardly believe it. What in the world causes that sort of neurosis?

Although I hardly ever stop cleaning, for me it is merely a means to an end. When I lived on my own, I hardly ever did it because I hardly ever needed to. I am good at keeping things clean: I endlessly put stuff away, bundle up letters, discard trash, tidy up corners. I don't do this because it gives me pleasure, though; I do this because I want to avoid having to do a major job. I am a One-stitch-in-time-saves-nine type of person, whereas my husband tends to let everything go until it has to be cleaned. This has caused some lively discussions in our family particularly because our children, for the most part, follow their father's lead. At some point, I give up in despair. I leave the coats over the back of the chairs, ignore the dirty gym kit left in the stairwell, stop nagging the kids to bring down their empty sandwich containers and trash. I let the blue dye my eldest uses build up in the shower stall instead of scrubbing it out, allow the errant pillows and slipcovers to remain where they were thrown, and fail to collect the scattered newspapers. After a month or two the house is even too awful for the others to bear, and my husband clicks into action. And he is wonderful to behold.

As the one person in the household who consistently hangs up her own clothes and makes up the bed, who puts the lid back on the toothpaste, discards the empty toilet paper core and replaces the roll, picks wet towels off the floor and hangs them up to dry, removes clothing from the kitchen table and nags the slob who left it there to put it away; who wipes away the crumbs, scrubs the counter of spilt water, catsup, pickle, milk, and butter; who screws the lids back on jars, re-refrigerates the forgotten carton of milk and tidies away the cereal box that has been left out and gaping open; who engages in daily sweeping, wiping, discarding, and dusting -- in short, as one who does her level best every day to pick up after others and encourage them to develop more hygienic and socially acceptable behavior -- I feel that my role in the occasional all-hands-on-deck housecleaning performance does not have to be so central. On the rare occasions this gargantuan feat takes place, I tend to take a deep breath and go off to indulge myself in tackling a particular task that has long been left: cleaning underneath a bed, perhaps, or sorting out a box of photographs. It is not that I do nothing; I will spend the entire day quietly tidying some corner while the rest of the household slaves. After my largely unrelenting and concerted daily efforts, I feel that I have earned the right not to race about the house with dust-rags and cleaning fluids.

Not without a pang of guilt I listen to the energetic scrubbing, the vacuum cleaner being plied over carpet, the rustling of plastic bags as mounds of trash are collected from the kids' rooms. I do a bit of cleaning that I might otherwise have been too busy to do, then I walk around the house and admire how beautifully clean it is; I am proudly shown the sparkling hearths and debris-less hallway, the neatly hung-up coats in the closet, the practically-glittering kitchen floor, the gleaming shower stall free of its smears of soap and tiny wads of teenager hair (my husband maintains a shaved head; I deal with my own sullied locks).

But there is a price -- there is always a price. Whenever people come to visit, one of my kids is bound to say, quite truthfully: See how clean the house is? I helped my Dad do it.

Any Old Port vs A Place for Everything

"Mom!" my youngest squeals, all frantic. "My gym kit! Have you seen it?"

I get questions like that all the time and they fill me with a mixture of despair and fury.

"(Mary / Mom)," says husband or kid, "have you seen my (gym shoes / headphones / glasses / socks / keys / bag / book / CD / library card / shoes / coat / MP-3 player)?"

The answer is usually "yes," but I've learned that lying is the only way out. Because if I say "yes," chances are very good that "Where did you see it?" will be the next question, and I'm damned if I'm going to get involved. So I generally try something sneaky first. "Where did you put it?" I'll ask. Sometimes when I'm really fed up I can't resist adding "Did you put it away where I told you to?"

"Oh, if you're just going to lecture me," the offender will huff, "I'll just keep looking for (it / them) on my own!" And continue looking they will, but it's not the last I hear of it. Oh, no.

I have a simple philosophy which, although it sounds obnoxiously smug and pat, works fine for me: "A place for everything and everything in its place." So obvious it's embarrassing, right? Yes, but only to me, apparently.

My library card goes back into my wallet after I've checked out my books. My keys go into my bag when I'm done with them. My coat goes on the coat hook (until my kids tear it off in search of their own), and my glasses go on the computer table or next to my bed. The other members of this household have their own way of doing things. Never mind that their way doesn't work a damn bit; I have nevertheless been powerless to change it.

Whereas I am a 'place-for-everything' person, their philosophy might best be summed up as 'Any old port in a storm.' My husband is inclined to put his keys down on the kitchen counter, mantelpiece, Welsh dresser, windowsill, or bedside table. Sometimes he'll just leave them in his coat or trouser pocket, and once in a while he'll get creative and hide them under wet towels on top of the washing machine. My kids leave their shoes wherever they happen to take them off, drape their coats over furniture -- the kitchen table being a favored spot -- and leave their backpacks where they are bound to be tripped over. Mobile phones and MP-3 players may be found behind the computer table, on the sink, in my bedroom, or in the bathroom. And don't get me started on socks.

So why won't I just tell them where the blessed thing is? Why won't I point them in the right direction when they're charging all over the house in a dither over missing documents, homework assignments, keys, mobile phone or shoes?

Say I'm cooking or doing the laundry. There, where it ought not to be, I see my husband's wallet or my kid's library card. I'm generally too busy doing what I'm doing to pick it up, which is a good thing, because on the rare occasion that I have done this, I'm also too busy to remember where I put it. I came across my youngest kid's library card in the kitchen once and left it in the garden shed on my way to do some pruning. I found it there weeks after a household search that lasted the better part of an afternoon, and I never heard the end of it. Never mind that I was just trying to help; never mind that I wouldn't have touched her library card if it had been put back in its Special Place. The same thing has happened with other Very Important Belongings, and now when I see them, I do my damndest to make a mental note where I saw them, but like as not I forget. Then comes the dreaded "Have you seen my ...?" question and I cringe.

I wasn't always what my family calls 'anal' and I call 'responsible' about my possesions. Up until I had a baby I was famous for misplacing my coat, my train pass, my house keys. Then one day when I was leaving for work, I had an epiphany. I had already rolled the boulder uphill by getting my eleven-month-old ready for nursery and myself ready for work. I had fed, dressed, and changed my infant. I had my own lunch and work materials ready, my hair was neatly fixed in a bun, the kid was strapped to me and her day bag was prepared. But I couldn't find my keys. It took me the better part of 45 minutes to locate them, and when I finally did, my mind was made up. On my way back from work that day, I bought a large glass bowl. I put it in the entrance to our house and from then on my keys went into that bowl as soon as I'd stepped through the door. In time, other family members began poaching from that bowl when they could not find their own.

And now, here I am a full-fledged member of the Place for Everything Society. Someday I hope to recruit other family members to my group; hope springs eternal.

If any of them bothered to read this, they'd probably tell you that I don't always put my glasses where I can find them. That sometimes I too walk around the house asking if anyone has seen my glasses, and stating repeatedly that I just put them down a moment ago and now they're gone. But the way I see it, I'm the one who's writing this blog...