My Own Personal Filth Files

I was listening to the radio in the car. Someone was relating a story about window cleaners. Apparently they had contacted a cleaner to come and clean their windows. The man had turned up the next day with the ladder, the bucket of water and his window wiper, took one look at the windows and withdrew his services. I am sure that the windows were no messier than anyone else’s. His complaint was the windows were too big!

When asked a few weeks ago about birthday presents…there was no asking involved now that I come to think about it, merely telling. I had wound myself up into a storm about late nights, ruined dinners and no telephone calls and, as ever when I get that wound up, the state of the house gets tossed into the argument. You know how it goes…working my fingers to the bone…coming home after a hard day to start all over again…the only one who cleans up around here…treat this place like a hotel..

Well, I decided to forgo the book, the CD, the DVD and any other such potential birthday presents. I wanted a firm to come clean my house from top to bottom! I was looking for a blitz on corners and grime and the stuff I never get around to doing.

Then I thought about the window cleaner story. Imagine if the van turns up, parks outside, unloads a plethora of bottles of stuff, and tins of polish, and scrubbing things and an industrial hoover and then takes one look at my front room.

“Oh, sorry, Madam,” he or she says, “there’s just too much dirt here. We don’t do deep cleans, just surface wipes!”

I have had two ladies that “do” – one needed the job to support a menagerie of pets. She was twelve or thirteen at the time. My husband, being the chairperson of his union, insisted I pay her a minimum wage and arrange the occasional work’s night out – a visit to the cinema and a pizza afterwards. There was a rumour, entirely untrue, that I tidied up before she arrived. We worked side by side for a couple of hours and the house was clean.

The second lady that did was a friend who just wanted to serve me. No rumour this time of prior tidying up. She managed a few weeks but then became incredibly stressed out. I don’t blame the state of my home on her stress. There were other things going on in her life.

So with the advent of the cleaning firm knocking on the door tomorrow morning – I kind of feel obliged to at least tidy up. I have already changed the bedding!