I don’t know if anyone actually really needs a Swiffer Wet-Jet, but I kind of want one.
In case you were wondering, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death was April 23. This is one of the things I wish I could say off the top of my head, because I’m a major Shakespeare aficionado, but alas, this is something I actually found out via Facebook. And then my first thought was “crap, another famous person died” but then I realized it was Shakespeare, and he died 400 years ago, before there was Facebook and people could speculate on whether it was drugs or a super-secret terminal illness.
Shakespeare’s got a lot of famous quotes. I wish I could rattle them off the top of my head (see Shakespeare aficionado, above) but, full disclosure, sometimes you just got to Google stuff. Us English majors, unlike the theater kids, basically just stuck sticky notes on every important page. Take away our texts, and we pretty much forget everything) For instance, spring, after much deliberation, has finally sprung:
When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy, over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.
The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,
With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing!
Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;
For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.
That one’s from A Winter’s Tale, which I actually for-reals have read, (and not just the Shakespeare Stories version.) But the Shakespeare quote that really gets me in the spring time is the much darker “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,” (also referenced in Hamilton) which, if you look at it in the whole soliloquy, doesn’t mean what I think it means, but let’s just roll with it. I always say “tomorrow, I’m going to actually scrub my floors, because right now its winter and they’re just going to get gross again anyway.” Except now it’s very much spring, and I can’t get away with that excuse. Or, “hey, it finally looked like it stopped snowing, tomorrow I should get my snow tires taken off.” [Snow tires still one 3 weeks later]. Or, my personal favorite, “Tomorrow/this weekend/next week/first of the month I’m going to actually get my life together.”
But hey, we can at least try to get a head start on the first one. And I don’t live in absolute squalor (helped immensely by the fact that I’m only here about 50% of the time) but my attitude towards cleaning is somewhat lackadaisical: If I don’t see it, I probably won’t do anything about it. My powers of denial are pretty impressive. Case in point: my microwave. I guess it never struck me as a thing that you had to do, cleaning a microwave. Because seriously, who takes long adoring looks into the inside of their microwave? I am irrationally afraid of mopping my floors (I’d have to buy a bucket! And a mop! And some cleaner, and oh god, where would I put all the stuff that normally just sits on the floor. And then if I actually mopped, what would would I do with my floors all wet?!?) So I do what everyone else does, buy cute baskets to put stuff in, because it’s not junk if it’s artfully hidden, and look adoringly at the Swiffer Wet-Jets in Target, and then just use Clorox wipes on everything, because those things are actually idiot proof. And apparently Swiffer Wet-Jets are a racket.
I definitely still have a college student’s attitude to cleaning: keep the visible areas clean, and worry about the corners/microwave/bathtub when important dignitaries visit (ie, parents). But I’m mature enough to feel guilty about this, but too lazy to actually do anything about it. That probably defines being 24 in a nutshell.
I don’t get what I can do a presentation in front of CIOs and angry surgeons, but mopping seems like an insurmountable challenge. And its not because its gross, because I don’t have any problems with toilets or clogged sinks or dishes. It’s probably what mopping represents: an upheaval in the normal state of things (gotta take all those shoes off the floor and put them somewhere) plus shedding light on some of the crud that’s been steadily accumulating in your corners the past 18 months.But I’m working on it! I sorta-mopped today-well, I had a microfiber thing that I got a little wet and swooshed around. Some day (maybe tomorrow, and by tomorrow, I mean next weekend) I’m going to buy a for-reals mop. Because that’s what being a grown-up person is, getting out of denial and facing your fears.
Wait, what’s that? You’re saying that ovens are things that need to be cleaned on a semi-regular basis too? Pshah, I’ll deal with that next year.
In Case You Were Wondering. . . 
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