Other People's Dirt

Whenever I move, one of the first things I do (besides unpack at least enough to make my bed) is clean the bathroom. I like metal taps to glisten, no unsightly rings in tub or toilet, baseboards free from dust, medicine cabinets free from scum. ( Possibly the result of too many Mr. Clean commercials?) The truth is it will never look like this again as long as I live here, but that is not the point. The point is: other people's dirt. My first conscious memory of doing this was when I moved into a trailer with two other girls my third year of college. Someone had moved out and I was the replacement roommate. I had only had dorm roommates before, with a bath down the hall (cleaned by a cleaning crew), so this was my first real encounter with other people's dirt. I spent the whole afternoon cleaning their bathroom. I even bought a new shower curtain. EEEuew… other people's mildew! The other roommates returned and were suitably impressed, and life went on. But I've found that folks are not always as receptive to my cleaning sprees. They can assume a kind of guilt-induced snottiness, as if I were deliberately pointing out certain flaws in their housekeeping abilities. Not true! I just like the dirt to be mine. And I realize that sharing a bathroom with other women puts me in a tough spot: the dirt is often not mine. But at least from now on some of it is mine, and that's all I need to know. Besides, cleaning it once down to the bare scum-free surfaces lets me know just how hard I have to work the next time. Not to mention all the interesting information I have gleaned from this last episode: toothpaste over time will etch glass. Now who knew that?