Housekeeping

May 20, 2007

I've been trying not to write much about housekeeping and selling the house, but I give up right now. I wrote this on Sunday. And then, more to follow.

I showed the house again today. A young 30ish couple coming from Denver and their realtor. He is coming to a research position; she is either pregnant or they are trying. How do I know about her – just a guess, just a guess. They knew about working on houses and gardens and seemed to take their time looking. They are deciding tomorrow and may stop by again. I could hope that they do, but hoping right now is silly. They seem to me the type of people who have some vision, and I guess that is what we have been buying this house and living here. There is a bit more vision needed to complete the house. I do want to tell people looking that this is a good house, filled with really good feelings, good Chi tumbling about not too quick or too slow. But how can you say that to a looker. They have to know these things for themselves.

I have been keeping house. House keeping. Keeping house. The effort of keeping the house ready to show at less than an hour’s notice is a challenge. It generally means vacuuming at least three times a week. Rooms with tile need that to be perfectly clean. Stray dust, dog hair, a few stray feathers, crumbs that the spicy dragon drops – really hardly worth getting the vacuum out under usual conditions, not continually, not on some sort of schedule. I can appreciate those who keep house so well. I don’t remember when my mother or grandmother cleaned when I was too young to have cleaning chore myself, but I am sure that they spent their days doing it. Those houses were always clean – a baby could crawl in white overhalls, food could be picked up off the floor.

I enjoy the knowing of the house as I do right now. We have had no choice but know this house, considering all the work the house has needed, and this is just another way to know walls and ceilings and places where the wood floor is not perfect and doors that don’t close completely, and nooks that attract dust. I have theories of dust and how it gets to where it is going. Great physics experiments would have to be performed to determine whether dust is a sentient species that moved faster than light.

Today was a straightening and vacuuming day to get the house ready for lookers. I didn’t clean the inside of the microwave and the upstairs bathroom that needs doing. Not that they are really dirty, not really, really dirty, just not as clean as they might be, the faucets don’t shine, the tile is soap dulled.