Chapter Seven: Housework (Please God, Give me a Roomba for Christmas)​​​

 

     Believing a clean home was a sign of a wasted life, my mother was never the most diligent of housekeepers. When I lived at home, mom made sure to clear paths to our refrigerator and our two bathrooms. Beyond those concessions, my father, sister, and I were pretty much on our own.

 

     While not much of a cleaner, my Mom was an excellent cook. Being simple people, that was enough for us. No fools, we knew how to keep our eyes on the prize.

 

     Alma did not adhere to my mother’s housecleaning philosophy. By her own admission, my hyper-rational wife thought our home’s dirt was mocking her, each speck of dust a testament to its ridicule. Never one to back down, Alma decided she would taunt it right back.

 

     Alma’s obsession with cleaning grew worse after the kids were born. Where my mother believed what didn’t kill you would only make you stronger, Alma thought every child sneeze was a sign she had missed something, some piece of dirt that carried the seeds of our imminent destruction.

 

     With Alma working, I was expected to carry on her sanitation crusade. I had a list of cleaning jobs, all of which I was expected to carry out with the same diligence as my wife.

 

     On the positive side, I did take somewhat to vacuuming. My kids grew used to my maniacal laughter as I sucked any rebellious dust and dog hair insane enough to challenge my thriving but admittedly autocratic kingdom of Lister Hills.

 

     Vacuuming aside, however, I was still my mother’s son. Tasks such as dusting, mopping, etc., had never made much sense to me. As Alma supervised my first dusting attempt, I made the mistake of pointing out the obvious.

 

     “You realize I’m pushing most of the dirt on the floor?”

 

     “You do it right, and you’re picking up the dirt on the dust rag. Don’t feign ignorance just to get out of cleaning.”

 

     “What makes you think I’m feigning?”

 

     I figured dusting was a necessary evil. Weekly floor mopping was where I decided to draw the line.

 

     “We have a dog and two kids. Before the children arrived, we talked about letting the leaves remain on the lawn out front under the theory it would be good for the grass. Maybe washing the floor every two weeks wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”

 

     “Your dog and two kids’ argument means we should probably do the floor more often, not less. Is that really what you want?”

 

     I decided to give up before my situation grew even worse. More importantly, I realized there was a side to having a dog and two kids I hadn’t considered before. With their buy-in, I would have two assistant housekeepers and possibly even a third.

 

     The kids were easy. From the time I was little, I noticed the tasks that seemed most boring to grown-ups were the ones most fascinating to me as a kid. As an adult and a marketing major, I figured I could use that to my advantage.

 

     I started with Emily. Meticulous like her mother, she developed into an accomplished furniture polisher – far better than I ever managed. As far as Jack was concerned, I knew my son loved playing in water. Hoping to capitalize on that affection, I set him to work on floor cleaning duty.

 

     Sponge in hand, my son was thrilled to be entrusted with a pail full of water. After I made clear that simply tipping over the bucket was not an option, Jack still managed to get the floor reasonably clean, even with a scrubbing technique that was half-hearted at best.

 

     To assist Jack with floor scrubbing, I also utilized Homer. After donning the dog slippers we purchased for his third birthday, Homer became an effective dog mop, with treats his inducement to run across our kitchen floor.

 

     We rolled out our new housecleaning system in the third week of Alma’s employment. After some minor tweaking, I was willing to pronounce the experiment a success. If I wanted it to continue long-term, however, I knew secrecy would be crucial.

 

     No matter how much I begged or bribed, I also knew concealment was a pipe dream - Jack and Emily would be too eager to show off their work. Considering the problem further, I realized stealth might not even be necessary. I had decided upon my strategy by the time Alma arrived home after our first housekeeping extravaganza. After she hung up her coat, I told Alma we had finished the housecleaning for that day. No fool, my wife immediately caught my implication.

 

     “What do you mean, ‘we’ finished the housecleaning?”

 

     As casually as possible, I said, “Jack and Emily gave me a hand with the dusting and the kitchen floor.”

 

     “You forced our three and five-year-old children to help you with the household chores?  Isn’t that against some law – child labor comes to mind.”

 

     “Child labor laws don’t apply to family work. More to the point, weren’t you the one saying the kids needed to stop watching so much TV?  I figured some household chores, ones they could have some fun with, might not be a bad place to start.”

 

     I had her, and she knew it. It was the kids who sealed the deal. Young enough to be enthusiastic about virtually everything, being trusted with “adult” tasks was more than enough to gain their approval.

Bribery the best inducement for both politicians and children, I knew I would eventually have to start paying the kids an allowance. All the same, I figured I would worry about that problem when it happened.

 

     With Alma’s reluctant agreement, the kids continued with their assigned tasks. My wife’s flexibility, however, ended with our upstairs bathroom. Even I would have felt guilty at passing off that one.

 

     To be fair, the bathroom wasn’t always such a problem. Alma and I did a reasonably good job of cleaning up after ourselves. Almost four years post-potty trained, Emily was also relatively neat for a child her age.

​

     Our son was another story. Jack, to put it mildly, had an adversarial relationship with our upstairs toilet. After numerous misadventures, he was sure it hated him. After hearing some of his stories, I could almost agree.

 

     The genesis of Jack’s bathroom issues occurred before he was even born. Shortly after we moved into our South Euclid home, Alma and I noticed our toilet seats appeared far beyond what one might consider well-used. Eager for a home improvement project I could successfully complete, I headed to our local hardware store and purchased three new toilet seats, one for our downstairs bathroom and two for our bathrooms upstairs. All three were the same brand, and all three came with a feature I mistakenly considered a benefit – the seats were “whisper quiet.”

 

     Whisper quiet meant the toilet seat and lid wouldn’t slam if you let go of them too soon. Rather than fall, the cover and seat would remain fixed in place unless pushed down by hand. In the minds of the manufacturer, this feature would eliminate the crashing sound made by most lids as they fell, a sound guaranteed to induce a scream should your partner be taking a shower when you finished on the toilet.

 

     It was one of those minor tweaks companies implement as an excuse to increase the price of their products. Alma and I adjusted to the change and forgot about it almost immediately.

 

     Unfortunately, the same was not true for Jack. My son’s first encounter with the recalcitrant lid occurred during one of his initial attempts to use our bathroom in private. Alma and I heard the story just moments later as he relayed the details between sobs.

 

     It started innocently enough. Jack backed up to the toilet, reaching behind him to drop the seat. Unfortunately, however, my son hadn’t lowered things quite enough. Ready to assume his place on the throne, Jack bumped the toilet lid, still halfway suspended in mid-air, with his lower back.

 

     Jack’s ordeal had only just begun. My son then attempted to raise the lid, unknowingly lifting both the lid and seat. Jack's back still to the toilet, he sat on the uncovered, now-cold toilet rim. While Jack grew somewhat incoherent at this point, he apparently followed this indignity by standing up, slamming the seat home, and again trying to sit. Sadly, Jack managed to slam the lid and the seat, leaving him still separated from his original goal.

 

     That was where Alma and I found him after Jack burst into tears. While Alma attempted to console our now disconsolate son, I tried to demonstrate the proper operation of our whisper-quiet seat.

 

     Jack would have none of it. Recognizing the toilet as the adversary it was, my son was determined to keep his distance, both literally and figuratively, until he could show our toilet who was boss.

 

     While distance wasn’t possible while sitting, Jack vowed never again to turn his back on his now-sworn enemy. That meant trying to sit while facing the toilet, a stance he accomplished by reversing his position on the child seat. I would have thought this new posture impossible until I saw Jack debut his new stance after bath time. Impressed he managed to get into that position in the first place, I made no attempt to correct him.  

 

     Standing presented a different sort of problem. Positioned a foot away from his final destination, Jack’s distance solution resulted in a certain amount of discoloration on our bathroom tile. I was again the first witness to this phenomenon, and I watched fascinated as Jack and the toilet faced each other like gunfighters in a wild west movie.

 

     “We should just have him use the spare bathroom down the hall,” I suggested to Alma. “You and I never use that room, and we could just close it off when your mother and sister come over.”

 

     “Emily just started using that bathroom. Do you really want another war on your hands?

 

     I did not want a war. After my third week scrubbing our bathroom floor, I realized I needed to deal with the problem at its source. After some searching, I found what I needed on Amazon. Now I just needed to convince the two principals involved.

 

     I started with Jack, who was intrigued by my solution’s mechanical aspect. After considering the problem from every angle, he requested a guarantee.

 

     “Are you sure this will keep the lid from hitting me?”

 

     “I’m certain it will. If I get your mom’s okay, will you agree to stand right in front of the toilet again?”

 

     “As long as I can still use my stepstool.”

 

     As men, we shook on it - now I just needed to convince his mother. I showed Alma the online picture after she came home that evening.

 

     Alma was skeptical, to say the least. “You want to install a swinging plant hanger on the wall next to our upstairs toilet?  In what universe does that make sense?”

 

     “Think about it. If Jack needs to use the toilet, he lifts the lid and swings the hanger in front, keeping it from attacking him again. I’ll make sure it’s high enough, so we’re not cleaning the hanger as often as we are the floor.”

​

     Despite my best efforts, Alma remained unconvinced. Finally, I enlisted our son. As we practiced, he gave Alma his best doe-eyed look.

 

     If Alma still balked, I also had Emily as a backup. Earlier that day, I casually implied Jack would need to begin using her bathroom if we couldn’t solve the cleaning problem in another way. With that threat in place, brother and sister were now allies.

 

     Two days later, we had the only bathroom in the world with a naked plant hanger just a foot above the toilet seat. Even more impressively, I accomplished the installation by drilling just two small holes, thereby keeping my promise to Alma regarding minimal wall damage.

 

     Jack kept his end of the bargain as well. After the installation of the PHTM (short in our household for plant hanger/toilet monitor), I noticed Jack stepping bravely up to the bowl to do his business. Witnessing its maiden voyage, Even Alma admitted my solution worked. She was still worried, however, regarding the reaction of her mother.

 

     “What’s Mom going to say when she comes over next week. How do I explain an empty plant hanger next to our toilet?”  

 

     “If you want, we can buy a small plant from the Petitti’s down the street. Besides, I don’t remember your mother ever using our bathroom or even her own. I figured she just stepped behind her garage and stuck herself with a pin.”

 

     I expected a glare, but Alma actually snickered. “Maybe that’s why she put a garden back there.” 

 

     As things turned out, Alma’s mother never commented on the PHTM. Maybe she assumed it was another one of my home improvement projects gone awry, or maybe Alma was right about that garden behind her garage.

Now if I could just figure out how to do the laundry.