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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

There's neat and tidy, and then there's this guy

Talk about a neat freak.
There is a gentleman in Idaho who recently opened the Museum of the Clean.
Huh? That was my first reaction too. What is a Museum of the Clean?
My teenage son has created a Museum of the Messy, but he prefers to call it his bedroom.
Anyway, the neat freak museum features several hundred pre-electric vacuum cleaners (I believe they were called brooms) and a whole raft of other tools used over the years to keep the home neat and tidy.
There is even an interactive game that encourages kids to keep their room clean. The game is just slightly less popular than the “Hey kids let’s iron our socks” exhibit.
The curator of the museum said people who don’t understand the concept “must never have experienced the satisfaction of making a toilet bowl sparkle.”
He is right and I’m OK with that.
I have never experienced a thrill when cleaning a loo, ever. I have cleaned loos before on many occasions I just never found it to be an overly thrilling adventure.
“Hmmmm, should I go paintballing with my friends and experience the thrill of the hunt or stay home and experience the thrill of cleaning the toilet?”
Oddly enough, I have never selected the bowl over the hunt.
When it comes to cleaning the house, I must admit the Missus is definitely in charge. I clean in my own man-way, but as most men know the man-way often translates into the wrong way.
I vacuum, mop the floors, do the dishes and tidy up (to my man standard that is), but no matter how clean I think something is, my wife knows it can always be cleaner.
That is one of the downsides of living with a perfectionist.
I can look at a job and say, ‘Close enough.’
To me, that signifies the deed is done, time to move on and think about it no longer and to go on to more important things, like anything other than house cleaning.
To my wife it means something else, like ‘You’re joking, right? That is not even close to being done.’
I do try, but just fall short of her standards.
I no longer have to do laundry because on more than one occasion I messed up the sorting process, which I have been told, is just slightly less vital to doing laundry than the adding water part.
So, after mixing colours and darks together one too many times I was banned from the laundry room, and I am OK with that.
That is the upside of living with a perfectionist.
What’s the big deal anyway? They all go in the machine, they are all swished around for a while, they all come out and they all go in the dryer.
They are clean, right?
Men, are you with me on this?
But if the Missus wants to do all the laundry herself, who am I to argue.
Besides, I am still allowed to do the floors, fold laundry and pick up after the kids. No problem there.
I have not figured out a way to screw up those tasks and be banished – yet. So my fellow male counterparts, if you have any good ideas please let me know and I will be sure to implement them the first chance I get.
Because when it comes to cleaning, we dudes have got to stick together.
I am not saying men live in abject filth with garbage lying all over the place. OK, I admit some men do live that way actually, but not all of us.
However there is just no need to take the cleaning process to an extreme level, also known as the wife level. Close-enough-clean is still clean. It may not be operating-room-sterile clean, but who would want to live in an operating room.


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