TYPICAL CLEANING DAY AT YOURS TRULY…..

I come awake at around 5 am every day (That’s Nigerian time to all y’all Skype folks oh!). Some days I come awake with a smile, some days with a groan, but no one can doubt that I am thankful when I do come awake.

I usually will come awake with a smile on Saturdays and on Sanitation Saturdays (read last Saturday of the month for non-Nigerians) I usually will come awake with a smile that becomes wider when I remember what it is I like to do on Saturdays.

Read is what. I like to read in bed on Saturdays and the prospect makes me come awake with a huge grin. I read a lot of complex stuff for work and so on Saturdays; I try for some literary and mindless romance stuff.

The literary stuff is because I ‘form’ writer on occasion and I hate ignorance.  It irks me that there are so many great books and minds out there and I have not read them all, and with some of the stuff that is becoming available in Africa, by African writers, I fear the gap between what I should read and what I have not read keeps growing. Sigh!

Anyway, fast forward to Saturdays that le hubby wants to fulfill his ‘cleanliness to godliness’ mantra. He comes awake with a sigh and opens one eye to see what I am doing. I usually can tell he is not happy because he grimaces at seeing me with a book and asks gruffly, ‘you’re reading?’ I am always tempted to answer sweetly, ‘No, I just am exercising my fingers by holding this book up in bed’ but I never do.

Instead, I smile and dripping with saccharine sweetness, I say, ‘Yes, again’ and almost always, its followed by ‘so, what are you reading this time’ at which I will launch into an explanation of whatever current book has me in its thrall.

That is on a good day. On a not so good day, he comes awake with a sigh, opens one eye to see what I am doing and asks gruffly, ‘when are you going to get up?’. I will then usually roll my eyes and look in his direction and look at the book in my hand pointedly, at which he will get up and mutter stuff under his breath. 

The end result is that he will begin to dislodge every human from their beds and apportion them tasks. I usually will resist for the longest time and stay put in bed but knowing how my house is being disorganized in the name of being cleaned and the prospect of undoing all that will be done in the process usually takes all joy out of my reading  and gets me on my feet.

Living in a 3 bedroom bungalow with a husband and 2 girls and a dog is more housework than I care for.  Actually, I care for housework very little but I care for filth even less so there’s my motivation. I try to wake up most days and take a direct path from my room to the front door ignoring every mess along the way so I can invest myself in work but some days, I just fail.

From le hubby who uses the laundry baskets for target practice and is really bad at hitting targets to the end that his clothes and underwear land everywhere except in the laundry basket. 

To the older girl who sprawls on the sofa and snacks there all day.

To the cyclone that is my younger girl who has a retinue of dolls, and soft toys who must watch television with her or who need their clothes and accessories and hate to be left alone in the room when she isn’t there. She also is a diva in training that changes clothes every other hour as her mood changes and forgets to put dirty clothes in a basket. No DNA test necessary for this one, she is her father’s daughter.

So, Saturday is cleaning day and what needs cleaning is the floors, the bathrooms (we have 2), the guest toilet, and the 3rooms of which 2 are occupied.  The 3^rd is mostly a dumping ground for whatever is not needed in the 2 other rooms and also doubles as a guest room.  

And of course the kitchen. 

Outside, we have an impressive array of plants in pots and the feature that distinguishes the house is our plant-covered fence (which I love very much!). 

So during my resistance period (futile but very important to me) I will ignore every attempt to dislodge me from bed and stay with my back turned to their every attempt to involve me in the cleaning while answering their many queries in grunts or monosyllables to discourage any further engagement but they usually seem oblivious.

Mummy, where is the second mop? Is it okay to use this brush in the bathroom? (said brush that you picked up from the bathroom?) What do you want to do with the carton you placed by the bin? Should I dispose of it? (duh! It was by the bin and filled with trash! What other indication did you need?!). Mummy, can I wash my dolls’ clothes now? All very pertinent questions to this seemingly important quest of ruining my enjoyment of my latest book.

With a groan and a sigh, I will eventually get off the bed after haven read the same line four times because every time I went back to the book there was a new question. I would like to then just supervise my troops as that seemed to be what was needed to get the entire house in order but sometimes, I think I forget that I am the only stranger in this house, the other 3 have the same genetic material and do things in more or less the same way.

Thus in a short while, hubby is dressed and is on his way out. Whatever happened to ‘cleanliness to godliness’, I wonder? Sometimes, it’s the NBA meeting, other times, it’s the client who suddenly can’t wait or he has to go rescue some poor person from the Police Station where they spent the night. Long story short, he has to go and now! Sum total of cleaning done, emptying all the bins and taking a cloth to the pictures around the house.

Older girl loves eating but by the same token, she loves to cook so it’s not too much of a problem since I usually stand in the kitchen trying to dream up spells that will turn the raw ingredients into a meal so I can go and do more interesting stuff. 

Her contribution to the cleaning process will usually involve the kitchen somehow or the other. Not in real cleaning terms like sweeping and mopping the floor, wiping the worktops and disinfecting them, making sure the numerous bowls are paired with covers, no! 

Her major contribution is to heat up the stew that is in the pot and to try and find whatever goes well with it. To be fair, she will wash whatever needs washing when her meal is ready and will park at the dining area while regaling you with tales of what making the meal required.

Younger girl likes to clean. She will attempt to clean her room but the most important word in that is ‘attempt’. She will set up her stage by plugging her phone to a power source and while ignoring a radio she got for her last birthday, search till she finds a radio station playing music and then she will proceed to scatter the room in preparation for tidying it up. 

Sadly, she has my attention span, which means minutes later, she wants to try the next thing and her room looks like a tractor wielding a vacuum cleaner just passed through it. Sigh! On other days, it’s the cartoon that older girl is watching while eating that draws her away so that I am left with fixing that in addition to everything else.

So, I end up cleaning the rooms, gathering laundry from everywhere except the receptacles we have to hold them, sorting through to wash, sweeping the rooms, scrubbing the bathrooms, mopping floors, cleaning windows, rearranging clothes with a perceived sense of order, putting away toys and all. 

All of this while the troops are carrying on with their favorite activities and saying ‘well done’ from time to time like it wasn't their idea to clean the house in the first place!

Somehow, this same pattern gets repeated over and over again, such that I think this is our normal and trying to do anything else is just futile. Good thing about all of this is that I really don’t mind but it amuses me no end. 

How, they start the ‘cleaning’ and somehow, hours later, I am still doing the cleaning. Sometimes, I actually end up by myself when they decide to go swimming or to see a movie or the Tae Kwon Do they sometimes do.   

I really don’t mind (really) but truly would like the time to get more non-work reading done is all.

Even when I had maids for some time, this pattern was the same whether there is paid help to do the cleaning or not.  

The only thing I will NOT get involved in is the plants. I have brown fingers, everything I try to plant will die and resurrect as soon as any of the other 3 people (and I suspect even the dog!) touches. So, no, I will stick to cleaning…….