March 19, 2010

Domestically Disabled


Did you learn how to clean growing up? I didn't. Not that the lessons weren't forced down my throat: chores, chores, and more chores. (By the way, if you're reading this Mom and Dad, we can dispute these facts later, like when Marley's of chore-forcing age.) But the how-to's, the why-for's, and the little tricks to make it easier weren't really taught. Well, maybe they were and I just wasn't really interested.


Up until my mid-to-late twenties, when I finally got my own place (no more housemates with OCD, no more co-dependent boyfriends whose definition of clean was way less lax than mine); I had proudly considered myself "Domestically Disabled". 


Quite honestly, until there was no one to turn to for those tedious dishes, taking out the trash, or washing the laundry; my definition of clean was at best an embarrassing idiosyncrasy and at worst a major character flaw. I'm sure depending when and whom you asked - it really could be both. Mid-to-late twenties are certainly a time for character growth and this "quirk" was no exception: it was time to hang up the tiara.


I embarked on the journey to learn a whole new life subject, the long-disdained, home economics. Surely I came to master the once-foreign laundromat, iron, wash those tedious dishes, mop floors to shine and not stick, clean glass without streaks, make my bathroom sparkle. It was like I had become a Pod Person. It truly was an amazing transformation, aided not only by the first lone apartment; but the metamorphosis of motherhood that begins with those nesting instincts. With minimal elbow grease and the chemical alchemy of SC Johnson (A Family Company) products, my apartment was sparkling clean. 


But I began to wonder about this baby growing inside me, and the world she would inherit - and what was in those chemicals anyway? How were they affecting her growth? So it seems strange to me; and probably people that knew me not too terribly long ago, that I should be advising, illustrating, and professing the benefits of Eco-Cleaning for a week on this here little blog. But it's going to be great - and I do have a lot to share with you - and hey, it's free. Even if it is from a Pod Person.


Save the date: Check in on the blog from March 20th (this Saturday, Spring Equinox) - March 26th

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