thank you notes 3/14

i'm thankful for my weekly ritual of cleaning the house for the weekend. i'm thankful for both the process of the cleaning and how it makes me feel and the result of the cleaning and how it makes the house feel. 

i'm thankful that i always start by doing the dishes, which we tend to let pile up on/by friday night and which are usually covering most of our kitchen counters. i'm thankful that when i was young, my grandmother constantly crocheted scrubbers out of some artificial plastic-y mesh fabric in bright colors and distributed them to family and friends. i'm thankful to remember that she made so many of them that she kept them in garbage bags, which i remember when i was young with my cousins dumping out or throwing int he air. i'm thankful that up until a few years ago, these scrubbers, which in shape kind of look like something between a cruller and half of an orange (very crenelated/segmented), were the only tools i had ever used to wash dishes. i'm thankful for how good the scrubbers were for that purpose, which i don't think is just because of nostalgia but because of their shape and form and material, thankful for how good they were at getting crud off of plates and and how they didn't hold any liquid so were easy to rinse out and how you could use them for a long time before they "wore out," which mostly just expressed itself as their weave loosening a bit and them getting softer/less abrasive. 

i'm thankful to remember my college roommates thinking the scrubbers were gross and buying sponges to wash dishes with, which i thought was gross (the way you couldn't ever seem to get all of the liquid out of a sponge). i'm thankful that one of my cousins (i think e) tried to learn to knit the scrubbers when my grandmother started to show signs of dementia (even though she didn't actually get there, i'm thankful she tried). i'm thankful that when i ran out of the scrubbers i brought with me to the midwest and found out that she wasn't making them anymore, i was able to find a commercial grocery store substitute which is of the same genre of scrubber, if slightly too bulky and also not the object of love and nostalgia that a "nana scrubber" is. i'm thankful that at the viewing for my grandmother's funeral last year, my ex-aunt (i guess is the way you'd put it?), who got divorced from my uncle last year, came and was very awkward and anxious but wanted to make sure to distribute a cache of scrubbers that she had saved to my cousins and i. i'm thankful that she made that gesture and thankful that i gave her a warm hug (i'm thankful for how much smaller she seems than in my memories of her) and thankful that to help relieve her anxiety, she passed the grocery bag of scrubbers on to her daughter s, who is a lobbyist and so much more comfortable with schmoozing and giving people gifts, to distribute them. i'm thankful that when i showed great excitement at receiving one of the scrubbers, s gave me two more.

i'm thankful that d insisted i buy nicer dish detergent when we ran out this week (i'm thankful for her text that said "please don't buy the cheapest dish soap" and listed the full name of an antibiotic she wanted me to make sure was not in the ingredients list) and thankful that the kind i bought, which is milky white, smells sweet but not cloying and doesn't dry out my hands as much as the gelatin orange one i usually buy. i'm thankful that our relationship has lessened my thriftiness (cheapness) and increased d's thriftiness (but not made her cheap). i'm thankful for method dish soap containers, which are sturdy with a stable wide base and a nice satisfying pump action at the top; i'm thankful for how not having to pick up the bottle of detergent and squeeze it out but just to press down on the pump streamlines the workflow of washing dishes significantly. i'm thankful that we bought one of the method bottles once and just keep refilling it with whatever new soap we buy. i'm thankful that we have a dishwasher and that the landlady was proud to tell us how the dishwasher was from france, but thankful that i don't trust it or like dishwashers very much in general, so we mostly just use that as an extended dish rack for drying glasses. i'm thankful we have a double sink and a nice white dish rack in the right sink. i'm thankful, after not having a garbage disposal for a few years, to have a garbage disposal. i'm thankful, whenever i remember not to throw away my orange peel, to feed it to the garbage disposal to clean it (i'm thankful to think of it as an animal). i'm thankful to remember how often my idiot roommates in college jammed our garbage disposal by putting beer bottle caps in it.

i'm thankful for the way that washing dishes with hot water in the winter can warm up your whole body, the heat traveling up your arms and into your heart. i'm thankful how i get mildly annoyed sometimes when d flushes the toilet or takes a shower or if i'm doing laundry while also doing the dishes or if for some other reason the water pressure suddenly goes away and all i have is a limp stream which is insufficient for washing (though i press on and tyr to make it work anyway). i'm thankful for how happy i always am when the distant noise of water moving in the pipes changes and i feel the flow increase back to its normal power. i'm thankful for the aerator caps on faucets, which make water effervesce. i'm thankful for stainless steel, even though it gets smudges on it, which seems oxymoronic (or maybe just moronic). i'm thankful that this sink is metal after our last sink, which was cheap ceramic and stained and chipped and so hard to get clean.

i'm thankful that i wash plates and bowls and utensils first (i'm thankful that these things, which must be washed the most because we have the fewest of them, are the easiest to wash), then glasses and cups and mugs and tumblers (because their shapes make them seem "harder?" or "more annoying" to wash so i want to put them off? idk) and then pots and pans (because i usually keep them on the stove rather than on the counter, so i don't think of them first) and then any dishes from the fridge holding leftovers that have gone bad and need to be thrown away last (because my first goal with washing the dishes is to clear the counters and so if i feel tired before this last step or if the others have taken longer than expected, i can put it off). i'm thankful when a dish washes quickly and easily (and thankful when you get a run of dishes that wash easily, which feels like a combo in a very boring fighting game). but i'm also thankful for the satisfaction of cleaning off particularly strong stuck-on crud and smudges. i'm thankful, sometimes, to find out that i have to escalate my handling of a dish and pull out the big guns, to use baking soda or barkeeper's friend. i'm thankful for my forearm muscles, which are strong, and thankful that i try to be conscious of my posture now, because in the past, i would sometimes get back or shoulder pain after washing a lot of dishes. i'm thankful when dishes don't smell bad or look bad or have gross textures, but i'm also thankful for the fortitude to face them when they do and to know that i can make them clean anyway.

i'm thankful that after i finish washing the dishes, the counters are clear but not clean, so i use a magic eraser to clean them and the table and the stove (i'm thankful that d discovered that you can get huge packages of unbranded magic erasers from ebay for really cheap). i'm thankful to remember how when i was a kid and my mom had me clean the counters and tables and would get annoyed at how i used to just wipe the crumbs off onto the floor instead of into my hand, which i did because it felt gross to put wet crumbs and etc. into my hand. i'm thankful that i wipe the crumbs into my hand when i clean now as an adult, even though it still feels gross and even though it seems kind of unnecessary because i'm about to vacuum the floor anyway. i'm thankful i don't sweat it too much if i miss a crumb or two.

i'm thankful that after i'm done cleaning the counters and the table and the stove, i do a circuit of the house, putting away things and moving them aside to prepare the floor for vacuuming.  i'm thankful that we went to target this weekend and got a small hamper to put beside the couch where we can keep the couch blankets and other fluffy accouterments when we're not using them, which will make the living room feel less messy even when it's not clean. i'm thankful that d makes an effort to clear the off the floor of her study when i start cleaning, so that by the time i get their it's ready for me to vacuum. i'm thankful for our vacuum, which is old and small and red and not that great but gets the job done well enough. i'm thankful for the gross but satisfying sensation of emptying out the waste chamber into the trashcan, for the dusty gray mass and for the way particles of it rise into the air from the impact of being dumped in the trash. 

i'm thankful that first i vacuum the laminate kitchen floor with the rollers and then attach the hose and clean out under the grating of the burners on the stove and in the nooks and crannies and along the dusty skirting at the perimeters. i'm thankful that because the vacuum isn't great, i go over the same areas again and again, which feels kind of like a form of sculpture. i'm thankful that i then vacuum the hardwood floor of the living room, carefully navigating around the furniture and the various tiny cables of our electronic devices. i'm thankful that i pull out the table in front of the couch and vacuum the floor there, which is where we sit to eat dinner and so is a common destination for crumbs. i'm thankful that i reattach the hose and use it to vacuum out the boxy greige ikea sofa we bought a couple years ago off craigslist. i'm thankful that we have a single bed in our living room right behind the couch, which was d's bed before we moved in together and which i thought, because of the arrangement of our last apartment, would be nice to have as additional furniture in the living room. i'm thankful for the bed, which is a lovely place to read, and thankful also that it covers a large portion of the floor which then doesn't need to be vacuumed (i'm thankful that i do occasionally vacuum the blue duvet on the bed, though probably not as often as i should).

i'm thankful that after i finish vacuuming the living room, i unplug the vacuum and put it in d's study off the living room, then go back to the kitchen to regroup. i'm thankful i always make sure to drink a glass of water at this point, because vacuuming and dusting can be dehydrating and also i just need a little break. i'm thankful that after i drink my water, i get the swiffer mop and put a wet mop refill on its head. i'm thankful for the fun of fitting the refill over the head and securing it by pressing the damp corners into the little plastic vagina dentata (for lack of a better word for that) on the backside. i'm thankful to then "mop" (this is not quite mopping, i don't think, but also not quite sweeping, but i also don't want to call it "swiffering") the kitchen and then the living room. i'm thankful for the way their surfaces shine with dampness in the afternoon light (i'm thankful for the difference between the shine of the laminate in the kitchen and the dark hardwood in the living room) and for the chance to get the last few crumbs that the vacuum missed (i'm thankful to admit that sometimes, if the swiffer won't pick them up, i push them under the couch). i'm thankful that i swiffer (okay, whatever) the living room so that with my last stroke across the floor, i end up standing in the doorway to the study, where i rest the swiffer against the wall and go back to vacuuming. i'm thankful to know that by the time i get done vacuuming the rest of the house, the floor in the kitchen and the living room will be dry enough for me to step on it again.

i'm thankful to vacuum d's study. i'm thankful that it's the room that gets the most natural light and where the carpet is the newest and cleanest, so that when i vacuum it, the fibers of the carpet seem to really be responding and i can see faint lines that trace my path through the room. i'm thankful for when our devices make records of our labor, imprint us into the fabric of the world around us. i'm thankful to remember when i was a kid and my dad made me mow the lawn and i was really bad at it in terms of getting things even and my dad would get mad at me because he thought i was being lazy but actually the problem was that my vision was not very good and i just honestly couldn't see that well the edges of where i had and had not yet mowed, especially if the grass i was mowing wasn't overgrown.  i'm thankful that our landlord has a lawn service for our yard so i don't have to mow but also thankful to imagine mowing a yard someday, an activity which i think i would enjoy now that i like exercise and am more self confident and subscribe to a lot of podcasts. i'm thankful to remember trying to make mowing more tolerable as an angsty adolescent by using my early bulky low-capacity mp3 player to listen to mp3s of some comedy special by janeane garofalo, as well as songs by nirvana, weezer, green day, and the dynomite hack acoustic cover version of "boyz in the hood," which at the time was my favorite song.

i'm thankful that after vacuuming d's study, i vacuum the little dark hallway in between the study and our bedroom and then make a detour into the front bathroom, vacuuming the tiled floor there. i'm thankful that the first several times i vacuumed the front bathroom, i didn't realize the force of the vacuum and accidentally blew the delicate white washcloth d uses for her face off the shower bar and into the gross crevasse between the shower and the cabinet below the sink. i'm thankful that i think ahead now and move it to a safe place before vacuuming the floor. i'm thankful that d cleans the toilet, sink, and shower in this bathroom.

i'm thankful to vacuum the floor of our bedroom not least because when i'm vacuuming it, i know that i'm close to being finished cleaning the house. i'm thankful for the gross bits of fucked up carpet in our bedroom, which a part of me in my mind always thinks the vacuum can remove and which i run over several times before accepting, with some disappointment, that they are immutable. i'm thankful to finish that and then move on to vacuum "my room" in the back room of the house where i keep my meditation pillow and musical instruments (but which i refuse to call a "man cave," even though i covered the windows with blankets to try to dampen sound reflections and so it is quite dark and cavelike in there), which is a simple rectangle and the fastest area to vacuum. i'm thankful to vacuum the floor of the back bathroom. i'm thankful that i clean the bathtub and toilet and sink of that bathroom as needed and that they don't usually need more cleaning or even if they do i can put it off if i feel tired from the other cleaning, because i care less about them being clean than, say, the kitchen or the living room or the bedroom.

i'm thankful for the last area i clean, which is the small awkwardly shaped alcove in between the kitchen, the bedroom, and "my room," where i store the vacuum. i'm thankful to make sure to vacuum the area under where the vacuum rests, which seems like a gesture of respect to it. i'm thankful to unplug the vacuum and for the ritual of winding the cord neatly around the pegs attached to its back for that purpose. i'm thankful for the notch in the bottom of the housing for the plug at the end of the cord, which fits snugly onto the cord to secure it. i'm thankful to put the vacuum in its place and go on with the rest of the weekend in a clean house.