It has taken me a long time to love housework.
Most of the time I am busy with paid gardening, allotmenteering. keeping house is in third place. But for my grandparents cleanliness was next to godliness. For them it had all the force of a commandment. Alas, cleaning was all too readily taken up under compulsion.
What convicted me was grime. When I started to wear my reading glasses for housework they magnified dust, greasy finger marks, insect smears on the windows, spiders webs in corners, spilled coffee stains on the laminate flooring, wellington boot marks by the door.
My Victorian ancestors would have been proud of me as I got down on my knees with the antibacterial disinfectant. Let us spray.
I have polished the kettle, the toaster, the letterbox, the front door, the pictures that hang along the hall. Every time I think I've come to the end of it I see another object with that offending smear. It's similar to weeding. You think you have finished and then one last dandelion beckons.
Most days I clean gladly rather than sadly and not entirely because I have a horror of becoming an elderly person with a drawer of utensils blemished with verdigris.
As I stand in the hall, light shines back from its clean surfaces. Tomorrow I will tackle another corner. That's enough for today.
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