the legions of the clean

I’ve known of clean apartments–I’ve seen them in some old movies and Pottery Barn catalogs.

And I’ve known clean people in the past–people who not only live clean lives purely of their own accord, but who embrace the act of cleaning with a particularly enthusiastic vigor.

I’ve known clean as an adjective and I’ve known clean as a verb, but now I know it as a noun.  Clean: a state of being.  Last week, I transcended the dusty world of an eighty-year-old house and, for one blissful Monday morning, I became the Clean.

Observe:

That’s right, after almost nine months since we moved in, and eight months since our first vacuum cleaner broke, I’ve brokered a deal with the devil, the Dirt Devil, and my small square of elementary-school-classroom-style carpet couldn’t be more pleased.  After long months of sweeping the carpet with a broom (a futile exercise–don’t try it), lugging the neighbor’s dust-sputtering fifteen pound electronic monster up from the basement, and wiping the debris of life off my palms after a set of push-ups, things are finally taking a turn for the better.

Now I will list for you the things I have since vacuumed:

• an 8′ x 12′ patch of carpet
• the tops of the kitchen cabinets
• the sliding window tracks
• the inside of the toaster oven
• the top of the bookshelf
• the area around the base of the toilet
• all of the baseboards
• the floor under the refrigerator (as far as the stretchy arm would reach)

For a two-room apartment, it was a thorough effort.  Now, I’m not one for product-promotion and I’m not looking for blog-sponsorships but I have to tell you, I liked this wonder of modern engineering alright when I first started using it.  But, after about five minutes on my knees, whizzing it across the floor, I discovered that lo-and-behold it had a low speed and a high speed.  Two speeds!  And I’ll warn you now, folks, high speed is not for amateurs.  But if you’re serious about joining the legions of the clean, a group to which I now belong (qualifier: on certain sunny days when Justin, my live-in cleaner-upper, is out of town), you’re gonna want to kick it into high gear.

So close your eyes for a moment, take a deep breath, and feel the dust in your lungs.  Now, ask yourself, are you going to live like that forever??  If not, come on over to my place.  But, uh, just to be sure it’s at maximum-clean, why don’t you give me a call first.