Let me start by saying I am not the kind of person who cleans obsessively or frets over a few dust bunnies here and there. We have four animals living in our house - two dogs and two cats - so, enjoying a completely clean house is a luxury I gave up many years ago. However, I love it when sheets, rooms, dishes, floors, and my body are clean (especially after a good workout)!
Why am I focused on clean things right now? I realized every weekend when I talk to my sister, Sue - we usually talk on Saturdays - when she asks me what I am doing that day, I talk excitedly about washing my kitchen floor. "It's not washing the floor that excites me," I say, every time, "it's how happy I am when it's clean!" Sue must be getting tired of this conversation. I know I am. "How boring am I? ," I think, "with nothing better to say about my weekend than I can't wait until my kitchen floor is clean?"
Here is why the clean floor makes me exuberant, so exuberant, in fact, I am likely to dance around.
I love how the smoothness of it feels on bare feet. I love to run around with no shoes or socks or slippers on my feet. Bare footedness brings me great joy. Now, the kitchen floor is a floor which can easily, in a second or two, become gritty. Just as I excel at bare footedness, I equally fit into the category of constantly droppingness category. I drop a large assortment of things many times each day. Forks, pens, my phone, and, in the kitchen - flour, fruit, pieces of onion and carrots, glasses - both those I see with and those I drink from - my contact lenses, dog food, cat food, and, now that I am older, flax. All of these droppings lead to an un-nice feeling on bare feet. It reminds me of drinking tea. You know, the great anticipation of a truly fragrant, balm-like tea? How you wait for the water to boil? Then you wait for the tea to steep to exactly the right color - however you might enjoy it best - light brown, medium brown, dark brown, light green, medium green... you get the picture. Then, you get ready to take the first sip and it is smoking hot? So much so, you burn your tongue? Then you wait a bit longer and the phone rings or the cat pukes or someone knocks on the door? And then, you get back to the tea but it's too late? Tea is only the exact right, most satisfying temperature for a total of 11 minutes. That is how the clean kitchen floor is in my house. In about 11 minutes, it will be gritty and dirty again.
The sparkle and sheen of a clean floor make me proud. After washing the kitchen floor, I like to stand in the doorway and watch how the afternoon or morning light glint off the linoleum. Oh, so beautiful, and I am responsible for it! In the evening, the lights above our dining room table reach timidly into the kitchen, bathing the clean floor in a sort of moonlight bath. Ahhhh. I can see it now, in my mind that is. The floor has not been clean for at least 48 hours. I washed it 48 hours and 11 minutes ago.
It requires the smallest of efforts to realize the greatest results. My mother scrubbed the floors on her hands and knees. I have a friend who is a fabulous cleaner, and she also will get down close to her floor and put some elbow grease into it. I am not of that ilk. I am a handy-mop-with-the-built-in-washing-fluid-and-the-disposable-cloth-attachments kind of cleaner. Sure, I put in greater effort moving things off the floor sweeping, vacuuming the little rugs strategically placed at the door for wiping feet and under the dog dishes, etc. I do the prep. The actual mopping of the floor takes under 15 minutes. I LOVE that! A huge return of joy on my tiny investment of energy.
I stopped briefly to thumb through all of the photos on my phone looking for those displaying the floor in its most glamorous light and realized, with quite a bit of shock, that I seldom take photos of the kitchen floor. In fact, kitchen floor is having a moment! It's first moment!
Floor (as I now decided to refer to my kitchen floor) has never been the primary focus of any of my photos. As you look through the gallery of pics above you will notice:
There are not even enough photos of Floor to complete the gallery. I had to create a filler photo of descriptions.
Even a mismatched pair of shoes is more interesting than Floor.
Floor, frustrated with the lack of attention, may have attempted to take a selfie (see the blurred image above) and failed due to a lack of thumbs or hands or limbs.
With my mind completely overtaken with this reverie of Floor, I completely lost track of time and wrote nothing about the other clean things I enjoy. Oh, well. Floor is quite deserving.
Although the linoleum is nearly 18 years old and starting to fade and yellow like the teeth of an old man, Floor still feels silky, smooth, and delightful to my bare feet after I wash it. The vision of Floor in the sunlight is as brilliant as ever. And, I fully enjoyed this chance to acknowledge the contribution Floor makes to my daily life.
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