Cleaning and Tidying

 Well, it has to be done, but it depends how bothered you are, as to how often you do it. Cleaning, of course. What is fascinating about cleaning, is that people have such a variety of standards and attitudes towards it.

Several people I know have a very relaxed attitude towards cleaning. As you go into one friend's house, unabashedly, she tells you to be careful not to trip. This is because the hall is littered with rolls of carpet, a mop and bucket (both very dry) and several shallow cardboard boxes. The hall has been this way for several weeks. We go into her living room and though it does need cleaning, the more obvious need is to tidy it up. Despite the fact that the living room is large and there is furniture providing seven seats, none of them are free to sit on, because of all the clothes, thrown on every chair, waiting, it seems to be ironed, as the ironing board is up. In addition, newspaper is spread or rather strewn across the floor, plants are waiting to be planted and a huge bag of compost is spilling its contents mainly onto the newspaper, though it is also escaping onto the carpet.

My friend picked up a heap of washing, dropped it on the newspaper on the floor and asked me to sit down and what I would like to drink. She was pleasant, polite and effusive towards me - it was wholly evident that the mess concerned her not one bit.

Someone else I know has an immaculate house. It is clean, tidy and very minimalist. That said, it is soulless. She has a dog too, and the dog's area is so clean, that it would be hard to believe a dog lived there were it not for the fact that I could see the dog, right there in its very clean bed.  While I was there, my friend showed no tendency to clean, polish, scrub or mop but it was evident that she had engaged in much of this before my arrival, though not necessarily for my arrival.

Many years ago now, as a student, I shared a house with eight other young people. Some of us, three to be exact, were working class and the other six were middle class. Of course, nine people is hardly a sufficient number from which to draw a convincing conclusion, but we three were pretty good in terms of cleaning and tidying, whereas the other six were dreadful. Of course, at the time, I put this down to their privileged background and imagined that they might have servants.

In reality, I don't think that tidiness and cleanliness in a house is an accurate indicator of social class. Still, the way in which people look after their homes is fascinating, as is the way people prioritise their spending. In fact most aspects of how people live, is, to my mind, riveting.