Tag: House Cleaning

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House Cleaning, by Phillip Hoyle

I’m not against it, house cleaning; I
just am not very good at it, never thinking of the need until I can barely
breathe or company’s coming! I’d rather live in a clean place than a pig sty,
but I’ve been around a bit and know that standards of house cleaning vary
greatly from culture to culture, country to country, family to family, and for
me day to day. Sometimes I feel the need, other times I don’t even see the dust
or grime. I think of Quentin Crisp’s book The
Naked Civil Servant and take consolation that, as he claims, after
three months the dust doesn’t get deeper. It may be true, but then company is
coming and something has to be done.
House cleaning is not a favorite
task. Oh, I was trained to do it as a kid: to run the Electrolux and the
Johnson polisher, to do the dishes and take out the trash. I had to keep my
room neat, put away toys, return books to their proper places, and occasionally
run a dust cloth. Daily I made my bed although it was always an awkward task.
When I went to work at the family grocery store, I learned how most effectively
to use various kinds of brooms, how to dust and face shelves, how to mop and
wax floors, how to strip tile, and how to wash windows. Still, such tasks are
not my favorites.
During the past two weeks I’ve been
reading a book of Pawnee village life in the year 1876 (Gene Weltfish. The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965). I was intrigued with the
housekeeping work their semi-nomadic life required. They’d leave their earthen
lodges for a month for the summer hunt. In their absence fleas would take over,
so an advance party would return and start cleaning. They’d smoke the places
out several times to chase away the vermin and deodorize. In one scene the
women who were preparing their house complained that the fleas that summer bit
worse than the bedbugs. I thought of Denver’s current plight with bedbugs and
my fear we might get them since I check out books from the public library.
Fears aside, my house cleaning seems quite simple compared with what these
folks endured.
Mom was a housekeeper who must have
marveled at the modern home she and dad built just before their wedding, a house
with a gas furnace, gas stove, and hot running water. There were no trees to
cut and logs to carry in, no cows to feed and milk, no chickens to feed, to get
eggs from, and to dress for dinner, no garden to tend and reap, no necessary
canning chores. I recall seeing her canning set, probably a wedding gift in
those days, packed away in a box in the basement. I often wondered how one used
such tools. Smart woman, she married a grocer! Harvesting was a simple call to
the store. And I’ve mentioned the Electrolux, the electric polisher, all that
modern stuff. But life was not especially a picnic once the children came
along. Besides house cleaning and feeding the flock, she modeled clothing at a
department store, taught Sunday school, eventually led PTA and Girl Scouts
meetings, organized an evening youth group at church, and reared five children.
She served as a committee person with the Kansas Prohibitionist Party, attended
meetings of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, supported the Kansas
Children’s Service League, and after my sister Christy got polio, worked hard
for the Kansas March of Dimes. She trained her kids to do any number of
cleaning tasks and like a sergeant held us to our work with expectations
softened with humor. Housekeeping was easy for her, a woman who worked
efficiently in everything she did.
I married a young woman whose mom
very self-consciously had trained her to become a housewife as well as a good
citizen and good church volunteer. Myrna buzzed around the house with ease
keeping things clean, cooking, and preparing for company. I made it my task to
support her work by not leaving messes, picking up after myself, and assisting
in house cleaning anytime I was asked. I’m sure I was completely spoiled.
Many years later I had my own place,
alone. I was fifty years old. I immediately smashed together living and dining
spaces in order to gain an art studio, a place I wouldn’t have to clean up
daily. I rarely entertained but rather read, wrote, studied, did art pieces and
occasionally had sex with a guest. Later, in Denver, I had even less space to
mind. I got a sweeper, set up my art studio in one room and my massage studio
in the other. The regular presence of clients for massage served as my impetus
to do house cleaning. I’m sure I wanted Mom and Myrna to be somehow proud of
me.
I so tend to get into the moment of
house cleaning, a moment that takes me deep into a corner, for instance, a
stain or some other single task I’ve been putting off and attend to it with
such intensity I lose track of time and the rest of the things I had originally
thought I’d accomplish in the next hour. It’s a hazard of my personality I
guess. Oh well, I’m really not a house cleaner although I do a number of things
in the large house where I now reside. But I miss my two-room apartment that I
could really keep up with. Ten rooms seems excessive to me these days. Oh for
the good old days, but that’s really just a jest. I’d hate to get with it farm
chores, fleas, and bedbugs. So I do what I need to do and let the rest of it
go, oh until company’s on its way.
© 12 Mar 2013 
About the Author 
Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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House Cleaning by Lewis

I have been doing housework since I was no more than eight years old. I remember this very specifically because the summer of my eighth year I contracted ringworm of the scalp. It was the summer that my nuclear family—granddad, dad, mom and me—drove Granddad’s 1952 Packard sedan to New England and Washington, DC. We hadn’t been home one week when my scalp started to scale and itch. We had a pet cat, which had every reason to hate me but, when checked, it showed no sign of the skin disease. I might have picked it up in the Big Apple but my favorite theory is that I got it from putting the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner up to my cheek and making funny faces at myself.

In any event, that was only the beginning of a series of odd associations with house cleaning in my early life. My parents were lower middle class folk who rarely could afford to pay a cleaning person but my mother hated—that’s H-A-T-E-D—housework—so, when she was working, it was necessary to pay someone to clean our house. One day, according to my mother, she found a black cleaning woman asleep on her bed. That was the last time she ever paid anyone to do housework and, as far I know, the last time she ever spoke kindly of a black person. No, from then on, if house cleaning needed to be done and I was around, I did it (or, so it seems, looking back across so many foggy years).

Luckily for me, I kind of liked doing housework. (Please note the past tense!) I put cleanliness and order above godliness and I was the only person I trusted to do the job right. When I started working at the public library at the age of 15, my favorite job was to “read the shelves” on Saturday mornings. That meant putting hundreds of fiction books in alphabetical order by author and title and a similar number of non-fiction books in Dewey Decimal System order. I could do it faster and more accurately than anyone else on the staff though they seemed only upset that I lay on the floor to read the bottom shelf.

My second-favorite job was working the basement stacks. Down there was a large “squirrel cage” that housed back issues of periodicals, including National Geographic. Growing up in the 1950’s meant that there were a number of native peoples in the world who were accustomed to wearing little other than a loin cloth and, sometimes, some body paint or other ornamentation. The only magazine store in my home town was a great source of comic books and Christian literature but most definitely lacking in anything that would appeal to the prurient interest of a nascent adolescent. National Geographic filled the gap nicely, especially articles on the golden, stocky tribes of the Amazon River basin.

In my senior year of college, I took a job cleaning house for a retired professor and his wife. He was wheelchair bound and she was his primary caregiver. Their house was a two-story colonial with a half-finished basement. The finished half was the professor’s office and the unfinished half a place to store books, magazines, and other paraphernalia. My job was to clean only his office every other week, which only took two hours. I think they paid me $2.50 an hour but that would pay for soda, movies, and cigarettes for the month. Soon I discovered that the professor was a collector of National Geographics. Suddenly, my job satisfaction improved by leaps-and-bounds.

I now no longer do house cleaning—for myself or anyone. The thrill has gone. I still get a kick, however, out of watching the houseboy in La Cage aux Folles as he combines his flouncing with his feather dusting.

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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House Cleaning, by Lewis

I
have been doing housework since I was no more than eight years old.  I remember this very specifically because the
summer of my eighth year I contracted ringworm of the scalp.  It was the summer that my nuclear
family—granddad, dad, mom and me—drove Granddad’s 1952 Packard sedan to New
England and Washington, DC.  We hadn’t
been home one week when my scalp started to scale and itch.  We had a pet cat, which had every reason to hate
me but, when checked, it showed no sign of the skin disease.  I might have picked it up in the Big Apple
but my favorite theory is that I got it from putting the nozzle of the vacuum
cleaner up to my cheek and making funny faces at myself.
In
any event, that was only the beginning of a series of odd associations with
house cleaning in my early life.  My
parents were lower middle class folk who rarely could afford to pay a cleaning
person but my mother hated—that’s H-A-T-E-D—housework—so, when she was working,
it was necessary to pay someone to clean our house.  One day, according to my mother, she found a
black cleaning woman asleep on her bed. 
That was the last time she ever paid anyone to do housework and, as far
I know, the last time she ever spoke kindly of a black person.  No, from then on, if house cleaning needed to
be done and I was around, I did it (or, so it seems, looking back across so
many foggy years).
Luckily
for me, I kind of liked doing housework. (Please note the past tense!)  I put cleanliness and order above godliness
and I was the only person I trusted to do the job right.  When I started working at the public library
at the age of 15, my favorite job was to “read the shelves” on Saturday
mornings.  That meant putting hundreds of
fiction books in alphabetical order by author and title and a similar number of
non-fiction books in Dewey Decimal System order.  I could do it faster and more accurately than
anyone else on the staff though they seemed only upset that I lay on the floor
to read the bottom shelf.
My
second-favorite job was working the basement stacks.  Down there was a large “squirrel cage” that
housed back issues of periodicals, including National Geographic.  Growing
up in the 1950’s meant that there were a number of native peoples in the world
who were accustomed to wearing little other than a loin cloth and, sometimes,
some body paint or other ornamentation. 
The only magazine store in my home town was a great source of comic
books and Christian literature but most definitely lacking in anything that
would appeal to the prurient interest of a nascent adolescent.  National
Geographic filled the gap nicely, especially articles on the golden, stocky
tribes of the Amazon River basin.
In
my senior year of college, I took a job cleaning house for a retired professor
and his wife.  He was wheelchair bound
and she was his primary caregiver.  Their
house was a two-story colonial with a half-finished basement.  The finished half was the professor’s office
and the unfinished half a place to store books, magazines, and other
paraphernalia.  My job was to clean only
his office every other week, which only took two hours.  I think they paid me $2.50 an hour but that
would pay for soda, movies, and cigarettes for the month.  Soon I discovered that the professor was a
collector of National Geographics.  Suddenly, my job satisfaction improved by
leaps-and-bounds.
I
now no longer do house cleaning—for myself or anyone.  The thrill has gone.  I still get a kick, however, out of watching
the houseboy in La Cage aux Folles as
he combines his flouncing with his feather dusting.
© 1 April 2013 

About
the Author 
I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.
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House Cleaning by Ricky

          I really do not like or enjoy cleaning
my house.  Even as an irresponsible teen,
I would vacuum the carpet but not dust. 
I would promise to wash the dishes and then not do it, until I needed
clean dishes.  When my stepfather finally
fixed the built-in dishwasher, the dishes got done daily.  Go figure, because I still did not like to do
it.  I kept my bedroom neat enough and I
washed all my own clothes and often those of the twins, my brother and
sister.  However, I never liked to do
house work let alone house cleaning (does anyone?).
          Another type of “house” cleaning also
exists which, as a teen, I never conscientiously enjoyed either.  I did not even know I was doing it until much
later in life.  Now that I am physically
grown up and psychologically aging, albeit slowly, I realize that I am cleaning
my “house” rather less often than before. 
I am referring to having a “clean” mind but not entirely in the
religious sense.  It is important to take
out the trash, cobwebs, dust, and litter that accumulated over the years and
“open the windows” to fresh information that can improve my ability to arrive
at more accurate responses and behaviors to my environment or situations.
          The old cliché states, “You can’t
teach old dogs new tricks.”  Well, people
are not dogs and those who still have undamaged minds are quite capable of
learning, or more accurately, updating their understanding of any issue –
except math in my case.  I am constantly
acquiring new information and insights into any subject or item that attracts
my attention or curiosity.  Some would
say that means I am just easily distracted. 
I try to keep my mind sponge-like and fascinated with the wind of new
information passing between my ears, blowing out the waste.  With any luck, some of it even stays inside
my head, becoming the latest tapestry decorating the space where I actually
reside and entertain my guests.
© 1 April 2013 
About
the Author 
  

 I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in
Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach.  Just
prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on
their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my
parents divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
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House Cleaning by Michael King

I don’t clean house! I did have a housekeeper when I was working. One of the great surprises was when my last wife and I separated and I got an apartment. It took a few days for it to dawn on me that everything would be just as I left it. No one cleaned up after me. This was quite an awakening. I had never cleaned house and didn’t know how. I’m quite capable of making a mess and do so often. Merlyn keeps his apartment almost like a showroom. I wondered why it didn’t bother him more when my place would become a mess until he told me that the woman that he lived with for twenty-eight years wasn’t a very good housekeeper.

I‘m really not as bad as I used to be, I do dishes while cooking, somewhat keep the things picked up especially in the living/dining area and don’t let the bathroom get too bad. The chair in the bedroom, however, often has coats, sweaters shirts, pant, socks, etc. piled high with a few that have fallen onto the rug. I usually get that mess taken care of when I do laundry.

In the apartment building where I live the management does inspections of the fire alarms, the faucets, doors, stove, fan, plumbing and whatever is on their list. The apartment needs to be clean, so fortunately since these inspections occur every few months for one thing or another, I usually have a somewhat presentable home. It seldom takes more than 30 minutes to whip it in place except when they do the maintenance and annual inspections where they might look in the closet where I shove everything that I don’t know where else to put them. Now that is not unclean, just one hell of a mess.

Merlyn knows better than to clean up after me. He is so wise. However when it’s time to get everything up to snuff for either a major inspection or the family coming over or some special guests, he pitches in and we move the furniture to vacuum and then I dust and tidy while he helps with the bath or moping the kitchen. It doesn’t take long. With the bed made I don’t feel like I can relax in my own home. I love to prop up a half dozen pillows and lounge in the bedroom either writing, figuring, watching TV or just relaxing. The result of that messes up the whole image.

Now I know the difference between housekeeping, house cleaning and putting on a show. I only put on a show and only then when I feel I have to. I am aware I feel more comfortable when my surroundings look lived in but beautiful and with some since of order. I want everything to fit in its place, every chair at just the right angle and so on.

Now with this cleaning thing, I only use Dawn Dish Liquid to clean everything except for Windex and once in awhile Spic-n-Span. I am very sensitive to the scents used in most cleaning products. I must use a special laundry detergent or I break out with hives. With many cleansers I have breathing problems. So does Merlyn. I like a clean environment but not the smell of one. And I definitely don’t want a bad odor. I like to air out the apartment and if I want to create a pleasant aroma I’ll boil ginger or cinnamon or cook something that smells nice.

Since house cleaning is something I wish I could afford to not have to think about once I’ve properly instructed the professional on all the peculiarities I have. But I don’t have that luxury and if I did I might lose my privacy and have to wear clothing and then I’d have to hide the toys and the porn and who knows what else.

Other than absolutely necessary I don’t clean house.

© 31 March 2013

About
the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities,” Telling your Story”,” Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio”. I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

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Closet Case by Phillip Hoyle

Business was slow, so rather than just sit around wondering where my clients had gone, I got to work at home doing fall cleaning, that work where obsession facilitates doing a complete inventory of one’s possessions and an effective chasing of dirt from one place to another. It served to produce a lightening of the load and a freshening of my domestic environment. I ran the vacuum sweeper, dusted walls and woodwork, sorted randomly created stacks of papers, recycled all those things I had not got to or that no longer pertained, and carried out a ton of trash. I shook area rugs filling the autumn air with countless dust particles, knocked down cobwebs (after all, we didn’t need them for effect since Halloween was over), and even dusted the leaves of the fake fichus tree that so effectively fills one corner of the room. I washed the king-size linens, even the quilted spread, and added an insulated blanket to prepare the bed for the turning weather. With all that work completed, I had used up most of a day and so carried the electric sweeper to the basement.

The next morning I attacked that space making ready for the arrival of company for Thanksgiving. I loaded the CD player with some high energy music I rarely listen to and went to work all in a frenzy. Again there was laundry, sorting, carrying away recyclable materials, getting rid of cobwebs, washing windows, and the extra job of finding more out-of-the-way spaces for stowing my too-many framed pieces of art. The day passed quickly, too quickly, since as shadows lengthened I realized there was still too much work to do. I sat in a chair and stared at the closet door wondering what I’d find in there were I to open it.

Finally, as the room darkened with evening and my mood darkened, I wondered if I’d ever open that door. I felt sure I wouldn’t like everything I’d find there. “Oh, just do it,” I said to myself, rose from the chair, and threw open the accordion door to face the closet with its mementos, out-of-date equipment, and discarded values. I wasn’t surprised to find such things; after all aren’t closets meant to stow things out of sight? But I faced along with them a truckload of feelings, some of them that I had almost forgotten.

Immediately I saw the old LPs; the SONY reel-to-reel and a box of tapes; a stack of boxes of jigsaw puzzles solved last winter; fold up tables and chairs; table games for when company arrives; an old violin that had been in the family for generations and hasn’t been played for eons. I dusted these off, as I’d done annually for almost a decade. Then I turned my attention to unmarked boxes of uncertain content.
In one cardboard box I discovered my Diplomas; for years I’d gone to school, studied, was graduated from high school, college, and seminary. Years and careers ago.

In another box I discovered photos of my marriage, our growing family, and friends left behind in the several places I’d lived. One photograph shows me standing with my new wife by our black and white 56 Chevy one August afternoon at Lands End, a spot on Grand Mesa overlooking the desert that stretches off to the west. I wonder now what marriage even felt like.

Ooh, there are spider webs as well as dust. Do I really want to go any further?

On one shelf sat books, ones I had completely forgotten about since I hadn’t used any of their information for years. First were three large-print children’s dictionaries of the English Language, each one a specialized lexicon of appropriate usage: the first, language appropriate for school and church; the second, language appropriate for home; the third, language appropriate to use with my best buddies. I smiled, realizing that the habit of closeting one’s usage was a strategy of manners and survival practiced even by young children, especially ones of unusual proclivity.

Other books were there, volumes on sexuality, ethics, theology, and philosophy. They, too, hadn’t been opened in years, for when I had emerged from my closet I was no longer interested in their content. Well, not exactly, but my interest took a different turn, served a different purpose. I had considered their arguments, their insights, their potential. I had appropriated what I could and when I finally pushed myself out the door, left the books behind. Still their ideas inform my sense of self as I go about my weekly schedule and bolster my resolve to be ‘out’ when I meet new people and situations. But I quit buying updates of arguments on the same topics, content with my newer identity. Why I’ve kept these few I’m not sure. They represent the intensity of my inquiry into society and my life. I decided I was able to let them go and put them in the pile of things to give to Goodwill. Maybe they’ll help someone else.

Then there are the novels. I realize they, too, helped open me to my then future life as a gay man. I’d read them for decades trying to find myself among their characters. I’d especially searched for myself in gay novels and despaired that I must be so queer as not to appear. But I have kept a couple of them: Ambidextrous by Felice Picano and I Don’t Think Were In Kansas Anymore by Ethan Mordden, the two gay novels in which I did appear. I’ll keep hold of them for their encouragement and sentimental value. I realize that my experience of the closet, while costly, also helped make me what I am. I honor even the hidden part of my past. I also decided to keep the Masters and Johnson volume for its information on STDs—a wise reminder—and one book of feminist arguments about prenatal existence, a good thing to remember when one facilitates a group of LGBT storytellers.

And there was another book: The Craft of Acting. I’d studied this one over and over for while I felt at home with my profession in the church and comfortable with my duplicity/triplicity in matters sexual, I still knew I had to act. One tells a story but has to do so in a way that an audience can hear and perceive what is intended.

With this thought I look suspiciously at two old suit cases of costumes: Indian costumes for dancing at powwows, an African robe and mask for a children’s program I once organized, and a clerical robe with stoles. Even though I rarely dressed up for Halloween, I did have my costumes, my own drag costumes exotic and clerical. By wearing these costumes I defined my difference in socially acceptable ways. I guess I should just give them to my grandkids. Who knows what they may be experiencing, what costumes they may need!

So on that evening of the second day of fall housecleaning, I decided to discard and to keep varying items from my old closeted days. I discarded those things I had learned all too well and kept symbols of the victories of walking from that cramped space in a search for freedom. That seems to be the case with all closets. They bare cleaning and reorganizing from time to time, but may I never forget my past closeted life so I will never think to hide there again.

Denver, 2012

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Cleaning as Metaphor by Nicholas

The winter was long and dark with many days overcast with clouds that looked like they’d been beaten up and bruised. Little snow came to cover the frozen dust. Some days the only good news was that there was no bad news.

But then fresh green sprouts began pushing their way through the winter muck. Small yellow and purple blossoms appeared. Spring happens no matter what. And with spring comes cleaning—cleaning house, cleaning the yard, cleaning up my life. 

I like to clean. There’s something about cleaning and being clean that says to me “fresh start,” “things are under control,” “I actually can do something about something.” Dust bunnies be gone, I am in charge. House cleaning is a metaphor for getting life in order and I like order. I can’t say when the next dash to the Emergency Room will be but, damn it, I can keep the bathroom clean. House cleaning is really about power.

I also like cleaning house because I have a fondness for stupid little busy work, i.e., chores. Chores take up time, distract one from whatever you need distracting from, and give one the illusion of meaningful activity, of doing something that, really, after all does have to be done. Chores are an existential act, a sign of being, or, if you’re a philosopher, being-ness. Cleanliness may or may not be next to godliness, but it is right up there with human-ness. It’s like your mother used to say about your room: “Does some animal live here?”

Cleaning house is important. It is so important that I am willing to pay someone to do it for me. After all, the exchange of money is the highest form of activity in American society, so it is fitting that this noble endeavor should be further honored by the payment of cash to another to do the actual cleaning. 

I keep a pretty clean house and since we don’t have kids or dogs, our house does not collect inordinate amounts of dirt. But still, dirt does accumulate and there are some things that I just won’t do. I will vacuum the carpets but I hate dusting things. I almost would rather throw them away than dust stuff. So, I pay someone else to dust my trinkets and souvenirs. 

House cleaners come into my house and make my little house cleaning busyness look like actual work, like a science. I know I can trust these professionals. They know how to tackle a project like dusting wooden slat venetian blinds. I would just slap the things around and get fed up, say it looked good enough and quit. But cleaners take to it like a surgeon doing an operation on a vital organ. They have a plan of attack and follow it. I figure, it’s knowledge and skill I am paying for, not just relief from drudgery. I admire the professionals who actually do take house cleaning far more seriously than I ever do.

I used to be one of those professionals making my living for a time cleaning up other people’s messes while I struggled to make a living as a freelance writer and journalist. It is work cleaning a house and that’s another reason I don’t begrudge someone what I pay them to clean up my dirt.

But sometimes I just let the cleaning go. Today, for example, I did not get around to cleaning the bathroom which does need it. Instead I spent the morning finishing this story. Some things trump even house cleaning. 

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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House Cleaning by Ray S

The inspiration or need to excavate some 80 years worth of one time essential acquisitions long since forgotten in their deep dark hiding places–under the basement stairs, the long forgotten coal bin, through the trapdoor to the spidery crawl space. You know what I mean. Out of sight, out of mind.

Why start? It’s just a never ending task with so many unknown challenges and memories to be confronted with. You set out to clean up the mess, sort out the savers, discard that which you cannot even remember where it came from, or was it even yours?

Because of a faint flicker of conscience fighting its way to the fore, guilt is the reward for the slacker so get on with it, you haven’t got all day or forever for that matter. The voice of conscience and virtue spurs you on to…let’s start at the top this time–it’s too dark and moldy in the nether regions.

Open the stairway door to the third floor, with trash can, broom, dust pan, and flash light it is an all out attack on the ancient history–stocked, stored, and discarded of 107 Bloomingbank Road. Watch out sleeping dreams of long ago, ghosts of growing and growing older, forbidden and forgotten memories. You’re about to be rousted out of your dusty but cozy shoe boxes, photo albums, school year books filled with pictures of people you can’t recall or one’s you yearned to know well or more intimately.

O M! There’s a picture of gorgeous Ian McCullum. I was in love with him before I even knew about same sex love, or was it lust? Anyway he asked me to be his partner in an Apache dance skit for the senior hight talent night. I couldn’t believe it. He’d been pleasant enough at school, but we weren’t pals. The truth will out. As his partner, I had to appear in black satin pajamas and flowing scarf topped off with a feathered turbin. You can guess where this was going….

After the show ended so did my infatuation primarily because Ian liked girls better than apprentice fags. So much for the 1943 year book.

Wonder if this box of 78 RPM’s would bring anything at collector’s row? Probably Value Village would turn them down. Oh well, let’s move on. Now, look at this all wrapped up in newspaper–the Chicago Tribune, June, 1941–the old and cherished Lionel steam locomotive, all that remains of your train board that you received on an earlier Christmas 1938 which was immediately commandeered by your older brother and dad. But it’s the thought that counts and you did get a tunnel and train station the next year.

Here’s a box of letters to the family when I was going to be an Air Corps hero. If naivete was a qualification for the Army Air Corp, I was overly qualified. After the Army’s foregone decision that washed out all of the cadet squadron, the men (all 18 year olds) moved on the many and varied military positions: guard duty, kitchen police, butt control, and, if you’re lucky, a corner in the squad room.

In the process of pursuing weekend passes and R&R the more important (depending on your point of view) aspects of emerging male on male associations had taken a particular precedence over sporting events and cultural pursuits; such as, the grand old hotel in Richmond that hosted a military gang bang in room 769. Talk about advanced education opportunities.

Look at this–an old post card post marked Chicago, Ill. from dear sweet Tom the warrant office that made my acquaintance on the bus returning to the Air Force Base from D.C. Just enough time to establish the fact that maybe he could find a place for me in his office. Gee, I wish I’d kept in touch after we got our Ruptured Ducks, but he was married anyway and I didn’t know about the subtleties of being BI.

More fodder for the trash bag of years gone by–some misspent, some not–one can only judge from the long view back. Housecleaning, as I told you, can be a never- ending chore that sometimes can only be concluded by one of two situations: the house burns down or you stop reading those letters and breathing.

About the Author

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House Cleaning by Merlyn

I did a mayor house cleaning 2 years ago when I left Portland. Almost everything that I hadn’t used in the three years before I left Portland I sold or gave away.

I live in a small studio apartment that’s easy to keep clean. I have a place for everything and don’t keep things I don’t need.

I can fix a whole meal and only have two or three things dirty that I wash right after we eat so there’s never anything dirty in the kitchen sink.

I use one coffee cup for coffee, tea and water and one wine glass.

I have never cared much about fashion; I wear something until it is dirty and then put it in the dirty clothes basket. So there’s never a pile of clothes that were only worn for an hour or so on the back of a chair.

I like a clean house. When something needs to be cleaned I clean it, but I don’t get carried away house cleaning.

About the Author

I’m a retired gay man now living in Denver Colorado with my partner Michael. I grew up in the Detroit area. Through the various kinds of work I have done I have seen most of the United States. I have been involved in technical and mechanical areas my whole life, all kinds of motors and computer systems. I like travel, searching for the unusual and enjoying life each day.

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House Cleaning by Donny Kaye

Housecleaning, thoroughness, reward and perception were all interconnected in my early years of formation with my mother. By the ages of seven, eight and nine I was responsible for the weekly cleaning of our modest home in Athmar Park. My father was a laborer at the nearby rubber factory and consequently our resources were few. This meant that what belongings we did have were cared for in the most particular of ways to extend their life as much as possible. My parent’s European heritage as well as having survived the Great Depression resulted in the lived experience of the old adage, cleanliness is next to godliness.

Weekly, the house cleaning tasks were evident and it was my job to complete those tasks, thoroughly by noon on Saturdays. If the tasks were completed to my mother’s satisfaction, “The Best Little Boy” was rewarded with a trip to JC Penny on Broadway. There I would get to pick out new underwear, or socks, possibly a new striped t-shirt as my reward. The essentials hardly seemed a reward but if I didn’t meet the cleanliness requirements, I went without! Children of today might regard this as abusive!

I learned that each cleaning task in each room of our unassuming home was essential and non-negotiable if I was to receive my reward. Cleaning meant the whole house, in its entirety, not just the front rooms of the house or any type of weekly rotation of cleaning; it meant all of the rooms from the back door and out the front. “Spic and Span”, early on became my motto!

Being “The Best Little Boy” also meant distinguishing early on, the best cleaners for different tasks such as vinegar water, baking soda, bon-ami, as well as the skillful operation of the Hoover and manipulation of the ringer in the rag-mop bucket.

I trained early-on in life and developed some useful life skills when it comes to housecleaning. I also realized as a child that house cleaning served to cover up some of the unique character of our meager belongings. I don’t know that it was a direct teaching but I certainly learned that if it was clean and orderly, there was less likely a question to be raised about quality or fundamental characteristics. It certainly taught me that some things were best kept in the closet, even if the closet in the back of the house existed like the legendary “Fibber McGee and Molly’s” closet.

Some of what I learned as a seven-year-old has transferred into essential skills and learning for life. Especially these past 10 years I have come to realize the whole house does not have to be done immediately and that it’s possible to approach it one room at a time starting with the most essential of the living spaces. If that space that is the most lived in is attended to in a good way, the other spaces of the interior can hold and be dealt with as necessary. And when the main interior space is cleared, the need to cover up what is fundamental diminishes into nonexistence. Since that day in the quiet and isolation of the bathroom when I first acknowledged my homosexuality, the cleansing that was necessary for me to begin this journey into wholeness began. One day at a time; one revelation to the next. First, my former wife, a few close friends, and then my children, extending into coming out clearings with 39 others, the cobwebs of a lifetime resulting from a closet not opened. Recently someone asked me about my coming out. Specifically, they were curious to know how my parents and siblings had taken the news.

“I waited until they all had passed!” I responded.

All had passed except for my nieces, whom I have come out to and one remaining brother-in-law, whom who has known me since I was two. And whom I haven’t been ready to face, much like that closet in the back of the house filled with the messy keepings of a lifetime. Last Wednesday I made that call and scheduled a face-to-face visit with my brother-in-law whom I’ve been avoiding for nearly 2 years. After dusting off some of the space between us with light conversation, I came clean and revealed that I was divorced and finally acknowledged to him what I have always known, that I am a man of a certain sexual persuasion. He moved toward me, close in. With eyes soft and moist, he responded by acknowledging having known me since I was two, that he and my sister realized long ago, when I was a child, that I was different. At eighty-six he even used the words, “coming out” with me as he assured me that my orientation made no difference in his love for me.

A true cleansing had occurred, a housecleaning of sorts. The skills I have learned over a lifetime applied to that final space within. I had come clean, no longer needing to hide the orientation within me that I presumed objectionable to those who have become the fabric of my life. The experience of confiding in him and experiencing his love was about acceptance, both mine and his. We parted with a long embrace, him whispering to me his love for me and his acknowledgment of how courageous it was for me to have come and sat with him. I walked from his front door with a spring in my step. Whew! A sigh of relief! This house is finally clear, it might even be called clean. I know this won’t be the last house cleaning I will have to do regarding this room of my house. Many more conversations will occur allowing me to come clean about the essence of me, just as the housecleaning that is always there as a result of living and the passage of time. But for this moment, like Saturdays when I was 7, 8 &9, the house is clean! What’s my reward? Clean underwear, so to speak. And maybe, just maybe the satisfaction that comes with recognition of a job well done! I think I’m going out and play!!

About the Author

Donny Kaye-Is a native born Denverite. He has lived his life posing as a hetero-sexual male, while always knowing that his sexual orientation was that of a gay male. In recent years he has confronted the pressures of society that forced him into deep denial regarding his sexuality and an experience of living somewhat of a disintegrated life. “I never forgot for a minute that I was what my childhood friends mocked, what I thought my parents would reject and what my loving God supposedly condemned to limitless suffering.” StoryTime at The Center has been essential to assisting him with not only telling the stories of his childhood, adolescence and adulthood but also to merely recall the stories of his past that were covered with lies and repressed in to the deepest corners of his memory. Within the past two years he has “come out” not only to himself but to his wife of four decades, his three children, their partners and countless extended family and friends. Donny is divorced and yet remains closely connected with his family. He lives in the Capitol Hill Community of Denver, in integrity with himself and in a way that has resulted in an experience of more fully realizing integration within his life experiences. He participates in many functions of the GLBTQ community.