Our columnist Lyubov Vysotskaya told why she can rightfully be called a slob and why she does not feel any remorse about this.
For ten years I had a magnet on my fridge with my favorite phrase: “Only one thing can look good: either my house or me.” Once he disappeared. I suspect that my husband threw him out in a fit of pure devotion. Well, or he himself got lost …
Hello, my name is Lyuba, I’m 34 years old, and I’m not an alcoholic, no. I’m a slob. No, let’s explain right away: I love it when the house is clean. But I love it even more when this purity is not directed by me.
At home, as a child, they did not bother me much with cleaning: “The child is learning! The child has a big load! ” It was more difficult at school. When it was my turn to be on duty, I grabbed a chalk rag, turned over chairs, arranged books – in general, I pretended to be busy until one of my classmates started cleaning the floor. If it was not possible to evade (and they saw through my trick quickly enough), then I tried to grasp the rag with two fingers. And she looked so pitiful that soon they left me behind with the cleaning of the floor.
Dormitory? Oh, it wasn’t easy there. If I learned how to cook deliciously quickly enough (for a selfish motive: borscht could have earned me authority among local senior students), then I was catastrophically unlucky with cleaning. The only reprimands in the hostel for all five years of study were precisely for the hellish mess in the room. But sorry! I had no time! Couples, extra classes, concerts, events, newspaper issue … General cleaning did not fit here at all. There were a lot of more interesting things to do.
For the first time, I wanted to change the situation in marriage. Once it became embarrassing to watch my husband scrub the bath and toilet. They didn’t bother me too much, but he turned out to be clean.
For a while I held on: I began to find my charm in cleaning. I even learned to iron bed linen! And then our son was born …
For the first week, my grandmother stroked the undershirts on both sides. Then – under her supervision – I courageously drove the iron. And then my grandmother left, and anarchy began.
Mothers who have small children and perfect order, how do you manage all this? In the choice between the opportunity to sleep for half an hour or to wash the floor, I had no alternative. Sleep! Who needs this floor, the child still does not crawl on it. Crawling already? Well, good health, more dirt – stronger immunity. Why remove the lego if in half an hour it will be on the floor again? And in general, no one seems to have died of swinishness.
No, I had several more attempts to become an exemplary hostess. I read Kondo’s Cleaning Magic. I studied the FlyLady system. From time to time I shoveled the rubble in the closets in full confidence that just as I neatly put everything here, it will be. Do you think that now I will tell you about the path through hardships to the stars and a happy reincarnation? Sorry no.
I can. But I do not want. I don’t see the point. A scrubbed floor looks clean for a maximum of half a day. There is enough order on the floor in the room for half an hour. Kitchen cleaning – before the first cooking. Neat cabinets – for a week. The time that it would take me to put things in order, I want to spend on things that are more necessary and useful to me: work, communication with my son, reading, and so on. Yes, as I was a slob, I stayed with it. All my problems would have been solved by an au pair. But while there is no money for it, I approach cleaning by the method of explosion: once a week, closing my eyes. And if the son asks to spend this time with him, then God be with her, with the cleaning.