Cleaning house, and then some

This being Sunday, I’ve spent the better part of the morning cleaning the house. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, my religious upbringing has instilled me with such guilt that I can’t spend the day of rest actually resting. Not that I would consider going to church – that’s way more effort than I had in mind, what with the communing and the benedicting and the beseeching and all. Instead, I’ve turned the old saw about “cleanliness is next to godliness” into something like “cleanliness is godliness”.

Today was a good example of my typical Sunday in search of salvation through housework. I woke up early determined to get a lot done before much of the day was passed, so perhaps I could spend the afternoon at a movie with my son or passed out in front a TV football game. I started in the laundry room by putting on a load of shirts, then sweeping the floor. Since the kitchen adjoins the laundry room, I branched out there using a dust buster to suck up clumps of cat hair (I’ve collected enough to build a new cat!), and sponge-clean the most obvious spots of dirt on the floor. Then I headed down the hall to work on our second bathroom, the one my teenage son uses.

Now the dangerous thing about house-cleaning is that it’s considered a “gateway” chore, one that can lead to more serious work. Once you get the blood and the sweat flowing, it’s very easy to get caught up in the moment and attempt improvements that fall more under the heading of “maintenance”. As I’ve mentioned before, I am in no sense of the word to be considered a home handyman. Too often, I’ve started what for most would be a relatively simple project only to get about halfway through and discover I have no idea how to get out of my fix.

Once, I was successful at changing a light bulb in the ceiling of our home office. I know this sounds ridiculously simple, but it did involve removing a globe structure, taking out and replacing the wrong bulb before getting the right one, and then putting the globe back on without breaking it. Inspired by this success, I decided to change another bulb just outside our back door. I knew this was stepping up in class – it was outdoors where neighbors could witness my failure, plus there were cobwebs involved – but my judgment had been tainted by my indoor success.

The housing that enclosed the outdoor bulb was a bit more complicated to remove; I had to feel the screws in the lid and figure out which way to turn them. Usually I screw so hard the wrong way that I seat them so snugly that they’ll never come out. (I’m sure there’s some clockwise/counter-clockwise rule about screws that I should know, but even if I did, I can’t translate clock-faces into screws when I’m working at the top of a teetering ladder). After much effort, I removed all six screws, lifted the lid, and reached in to grab the bulb. It was a tight fit but I got the bad bulb out and the good one in. I flipped the switch to confirm my success, and the light came on. What a man I was in that bright shining moment.

All that was left now was to put the lid back on. Because my step-ladder wasn’t tall enough, I again was operating by feel as I attempted to align the screws with the holes they had come from. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get even the first screw back into position. I turned it this way and that, re-positioned and re-angled it, re-adjusted the lid, and still no success. Could I just sit the top on there with no permanent attachment? Why did it even need a top? Obviously light-headed from the frustration and the altitude, I had to finally give up and call my wife for help. Soon the more familiar feeling of humiliation had replaced my earlier sense of accomplishment. My wife discovered that four of the six screws I had removed were meant to be a permanent piece of the lid, and it was only two screws that should’ve come out. She spent the rest of the afternoon reconstructing the housing.

As Laura worked away at the top of the ladder while I helped by being nearby enough to call an ambulance if she fell, I flash-backed to earlier humiliations I experienced in the area of home maintenance. There was the time we needed to remove a pine tree from the back yard, and I had to stand by and watch from the ground as my elderly but extremely handy father-in-law shinnied up to do the necessary topping. There was the time I took a full week off from work to paint our house – a brick house, mind you, that needed only trim coverage – and I didn’t even get to the windows before the week was out. There was the time I hid in the kitchen during a plumber’s visit so he wouldn’t be tempted to explain to me what he had fixed. A shameful heritage, to be sure.

Back to this morning: As I sprayed the bathroom mirror clean, got the worst of this colorful but apparently undesirable pink stuff out of the bathtub and wiped down the counter, I noticed that the faucet knobs were especially grimy. I had gotten under there a few times with a toothbrush but it looked like the knobs would have to be physically removed to get at all the dirt that had accumulated. The “H” and “C” tabs (“hot” and “cold”, I guess) looked like they’d snap right out, and sure enough they did.

Underneath, I could see the head of a screw beneath a layer of rust. The head had a pattern I recognized as matching a screwdriver I once saw in our utility closet. Could it be that such a tool would remove the screws, allowing me to remove the knobs for cleaning? I retrieve the tool and stick it deep into the hole and starting turning. Slowly, one screw backs out and then the other. But the knobs themselves remained in place. You never know with these things whether brute force or some kind of subtle maneuver is required for removal, but since I’m no good with the subtle stuff, I figured I’d just try to power them off. And off they came! I tooth-brushed the posts that lay exposed, submerged the knobs in soapy water and wiped off the rust with a cloth.

They say that when climbing Everest, the hard part isn’t getting to the top, but getting back down alive. Now I had to put everything back together without suffering pulmonary edema. I tried to lay the screws back into their holes, but they just fell onto their sides. I then balanced each screw on the end of the screwdriver, pointing upward, and lowered the inverted knobs onto them. I quickly flipped them over and stuck them back onto their posts. I had to turn until I found the right position, then forced the knobs back into place. Incredibly, the screws went in and everything was clean and restored.

I called my wife in from the other room and woke up my sleeping son. Notice anything different about the sink? I asked. “It’s not disgusting any more,” my son said. I’ll take that as a “job well done”.