Cleaning House

For cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves.     Francis Bacon

Saturday I cleaned, and I did it with a fury and passion that only comes to me when a) I'm being paid to do it or b) stress cleaning. 

Cleaning isn't hard for me. Throughout college, every time I came home on breaks, and after graduation, I used housing cleaning to augment my income. It's actually what introduced me to my last boss who eventually hired me to come work in the office as a leasing agent. So while I'm not always the neatest person, I'm not afraid of some of the weird things can come up with a dirty house. 

Stress cleaning though, I entirely attribute to a roommate from college who's sanity highly depended on the apartment being clean. She wasn't anal - the bathroom and back rooms could be in any condition we liked. But the living room and kitchen, where we lived and had visitors, had to be kept orderly. And about twice a week she'd descend on them with a vengeance, wiping, scrubbing and organizing. Initially I started helping her due to a mixture of professional pride and a desire to help keep the peace.

And then, I started to need the living room and kitchen to be clean. Specifically when stressful things were going to happen. If there was a date I was really excited about, a test I was worried about, or just anything really that had me on edge, I'd clean. This continued through graduation, and overflowed a little bit into home life when I moved back. The house just didn't feel clean until at least the kitchen was organized. 

This habit died a little bit once I had moved out, and things have since started to get a little more relaxed. I still keep things relatively tidy, but the big wipe downs aren't as common. Mostly because my little cubby is really only a one person space, and I have lower standards for myself than for guests. So when I got a call that someone had been arranged to bring me sacrament while church was closed for COVID (similar to Catholic communion), I knew at least a mild clean was coming. 

So when I was squatting in my bathroom scrubbing the grout between the tiles, I wasn't surprised. Or when I cleaned the toilet or the shower caddy. However, as I cleaned I felt myself start to transition from "light clean" to "purge the house of all that is unholy". 

 I scrubbed and I scrubbed. Sweat dripped down my face, landing on the wide lenses of my glasses to leave smudgy trails as I tried to wipe them away. My hair was braided and wrapped up in a kerchief with wisps dancing around the edges. That combined with the slightly deranged look in my eyes likely would have made anyone who saw me slightly uncomfortable. Fortunately, only the bugs were around to see me, and if the being that was set on eradicating them looked slightly terrifying that's probably only right. The fridge was emptied, the dark places under the sink checked, dusty dishes scrubbed, continuing in a twisting spiral of microfiber cloths and all-purpose cleaner

By the time I got to my room, I was two hours into my cleaning and finally starting to wear down. Sitting felt good and I fell into the familiar break pattern I'd developed as a cleaner. I knew that I didn't have another two hours ahead of my with only one room left, but the mad need to clean hadn't fully settled yet and it was getting uncomfortable to sit. Soon I was back at it, tackling paperwork and clutter. It was finished in about thirty minutes, and when it did I let myself collapse on my bed, panting slightly as I enjoyed the bright feeling that comes to a room after a deep tidy.

As the cleaning came to a close so did my emotions. It was important to me to be respectful of something as important as the sacrament, and though my apartment was old and outdated, it was at least clean. I sucked in the feeling and relaxed into it. Everything felt a little more manageable, and whatever additional emotions that had been powering the madness also seemed to disappear. 

It was ready. 

On Sunday a sweet older couple from the local congregation came to my door, and the husband humbly prepared to bless the sacrament in the little confines of my apartment. We sat around a small table on my floor as he broke the bread and poured the water, carefully going through the familiar steps. It was a comforting bit of familiarity in a time that was so uncertain. He expressed to me how happy he was to come. He had never had the opportunity to bless the sacrament in someone's home before, and it was evident on his face that this might have meant more to him than it did to me. 

Seated there together happily in my small apartment, I was grateful that it was clean. But more than that, I was grateful for the ability to be clean myself. Something that those of my faith believe is that participating in the sacrament is like being baptized again - it's an opportunity to become clean and free of things from the past. It's also an important time to reflect on the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, paying the price so that we can be clean. With COVID, we currently aren't able to meet in a church building where we can have the sacrament all together as we typically do. So having the opportunity to still have that, even with all that was going on with this pandemic, meant a lot to me. 

We chatted for a couple minutes, then I saw them through my little kitchen to the door. As they left, the wife pressed a bag of peppers into my hand that she had brought for me to try with instructions on how to eat them, and he assured me that they'd be back the next week at the same time. Then with bows and goodbyes they were headed down the stairs. Shutting the door I slipped back into my apartment feeling content. Everything was clean.

-Shayla