The sign has been in my grandma's house for as long as I remember. So long, that I even recall the first time I read it for myself: "My house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy."
The first time I read it, I didn't comprehend it. I was just proud that I had strung the letters together to make words.
Later, in elementary school I got the humor in it. It was cute.
Then came high school when I was close to graduation. I would read it and wonder how in the world someone could be happy in a dirty house? Even a small amount of clutter and dust was unacceptable and would not be tolerated when I had my own place. I even lived up to that expectation for the first few years of having my own apartment, both while being single then after being married.
A while after that, when I was working a full time job and the stress of life began to be a little weighty, I began to comprehend a different meaning. It was no longer humorous. It was a small treasure of wisdom. "Dirty enough to be happy." Relax. Enjoy the small things in life and don't let fixating on cleaning every crevice of my house distract me from seeing the fun and beauty in everyday.
The last 10 years I have had a kid and all that busyness motherhood brings to help me evolve to a completely different attitude. I see the sign now and think that whoever came up with it is a haughty, contemptuous busybody. "Clean enough to be healthy." What the blankety blank Yosemite Sam does that mean? Are you trying to tell me that I'm the only one with dust piling up on the pictures and a little mildew growing on the shower curtain where nobody looks anyway? Just don't turn off the cursed ceiling fan if you don't want to see the grime on the blades! As if I'm the only one on earth that hasn't cleaned the windows in a few months/years?! Well, if everyone would eat all that I cooked there wouldn't be fuzzy leftovers on the forgotten back shelf of the fridge! SO nobody but me in all the world has a perpetual laundry basket full of clean clothes that never make it to the drawers before being dug out and worn again? No; I don't scrub my baseboards- if the dirt doesn't fall off of them when I ram the vacuum into them during a frenzied cleaning then it is obviously meant to be there. Who the freakin' freak does she think she is? "Clean enough to be healthy." Yeah? Well, clean THIS!
I think maybe I should share this with my grandma so she will understand why I mumble and shake my fist whenever I see that stupid picture, which by the way usually has a film of dust on it. At least that gives me a small comfort of solace.
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