Fluff

Today

Don't know where it all comes from. The dirt, that is.

Yesterday I fitted some new doorknobs on the kitchen cupboards. Very nice they look, too. But I also got close up to the cupboards and could see all the sticky, grimy marks around the door handles and on the shelves.

So today thought I'd do a clean up. First the bathroom. Exactly why we need 15 bottle of shampoo & conditioner, 3 tubes of identical shaving gel and enough pain killers and plasters to set up in business as a pharmacy I don't know. And I suppose 3 hot water bottles might come in handy sometime. Cleaning the shower screen is a task never done to my satisfaction. The top of the cupboard was covered in thick, soft, white dust and little balls of grey fluff rolled across the floor like tumbleweed

Then the bedroom. Disposed of all the odd socks and unwanted, unused cosmetics, 12 makeup pencil sharpeners and so on.

Finally the kitchen. Why do we have a caddy of Lapsang Souchong? We absolutely hate it. 8 jars/cans of olives, some chestnut jam bought in Corsica in 2004, never opened and 18 months by its use-by date. I could go on.

In My Day

As Paul's Mum got older she became less and less able to keep her little flat clean. Paul used to visit her often, but as they were usually flying visits he was reluctant to spend them cleaning. His sister was always on call and kept things ticking over, but she had many other demands on her time.

So, in December 2002, I suggested that we took a few days off specifically for a cleanup. We booked ourselves into a little holiday flat on the seafront (freezing, it was, with heating not designed for the winter months) went over to Mum's and got cracking.

Given that Mum's cooking was by now limited to making tea and popping ready-made macaroni cheese into the oven, it was amazing what she had. Saucepans of every size, baking tins, ancient jars of spices & herbs. Tins of this and that (raspberries dated 1984 are one example). All the paraphernalia of a long life. Most of it was dirty and old beyond redemption and we chucked it all out.

And the fluff! On top of the cupboards, behind the cupboards, everywhere. Handfuls of dusty fluff. I stuffed it all into rubbish sacks. It got up my nose, ingrained into my fingernails, into my hair. The vacuum cleaner died as soon as we asked it to do any work so we bought a new one. The hall carpet disintegrated under the strain of being cleaned and had to be replaced. We swabbed and disinfected and organised a home help.

Mum was very happy because, when all was clean we bought and decorated a fibre-optics Christmas tree which changed colour continuously, and she couldn't take her eyes off it.