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I pride myself on keeping a reasonably clean home. I may not win any Good Housekeeping awards but at least if a creature died in my home I’d know about it.
I’ve discovered a lot of things cleaning the homes of others, including for some of my own family members.
I declined further cleaning of a friend’s closet after sustaining numerous paper cuts, one of which required several butterfly bandages. Who keeps paperwork from birth? Good Lord, that’s a major Class A fuel by fire department standards, not to mention attracting roaches, silverfish and book lice. I’ve never had lice, and I didn’t intend on getting any from her old utility bills and her kindergarten report card. Call it psychosomatic, but my head itched for the rest of that day.
I walked into one house that smelled so much like bleach I actually thought I’d find evidence of a murder. I called the local police department and asked if a deputy would escort me while I cleaned their home for a couple of hours. They said no, so I charged the client more for hazardous duty pay that encompassed any visual pain and suffering should I see something traumatizing while cleaning.
One lady came in on me while I was rubbing what I thought was her Crystal deodorant under my arm. I had heard about this kind of natural deodorant but had never tried it.
After she yelled at me for defiling her “spiritual” crystal and saying something about bad energy, she asked me to leave.
How was I supposed to know that there was more than one kind of crystal? Now I understand why it was in her kitchen instead of in her bathroom cabinet.
For cryin’ out loud, if someone must take “private” photos, they should at least put a black bar across the dirty areas so other people don’t have to see it. I couldn’t sleep for two nights and questioned my own body image after that.
During one cleaning
job a lady followed me everywhere. She went right along with me from room to room, it drove me crazy.
I was happy to get away from her and very grateful that I’m not half of a Siamese twin – I need my space.
Now I’m all for having pets in the home; several of my family members are animals, so it’s no big deal to me. However, I was horrified while cleaning a house when I thought I broke one of my client’s throw rugs. I bent down to pick it up so I could shake it out, but the darn thing fell apart.
The guy apologized for the gargantuan amount of Akita dog hair that was on his floor. It looked like a massive amount of discarded dreadlocks on the floor of a hair salon. My only question to him was why didn’t he pick it up? He said that it really did look like a rug, and his wife had recently purchased one.
I have resigned myself to cleaning only my own home from now on, where all I really have to do is clean toothpaste off the mirror, toss some furry fridge fruit and scrub an occasional ring from the toilet – unless, of course, my Uncle Vinny comes to visit, in which case, I’d rather clean someone else’s home.
Anngee Quinones-Belian lives in Murphy. She loves humor and believes the world needs more of it. Email her at anngeeq@gmail.com.