The Universal Law of Cleaning

Due to technical difficulties (none of which had anything to do with ME), this post appears much later in the day than it was supposed to. We apologize for any inconvenience.

There is, I believe, a Universal Law of Cleaning when Expecting Company. This law states that the tasks you have put off for the last five years because they are so unappealing suddenly become the things you must do when you are supposed to be doing something even less appealing, like making your entire house presentable for visitors. We don't have visitors very often -- you will doubtless see why as you read further -- but when we do, this law is in full force.

This law affects the genders in quite different ways. Women, for instance, generally find themselves compelled to do tasks that, though not entirely necessary at the moment -- such as the removal of all knobs on the stove for the purpose of cleaning around them -- nevertheless make some sort of improvement in the appearance or functioning of the home. When the Universal Law of Cleaning when Expecting Company is applied to men, however, the result, instead of improving the home, usually involves varying degrees of property destruction. Let me illustrate with a recent example.

With company expected the next day at our house, Joe's task is to clean the family room in the basement. This is important, because this is the room that welcomes you into the house, unless you are the daily mail, in which case you are flung through a little slot in the front door upstairs and deposited unceremoniously on the floor of the study. But for people, they generally first see the basement.

Now, we have a large contingent of household objects with no permanent dwelling place -- not as large as we used to have, but nevertheless substantial enough that when a visit is imminent, it is Joe's job to magically remove these objects to another part of the house so as to give our visitors the impression that we are intimately acquainted with Martha Stewart's Rules for Gracious Living. This task is so enormous that we write it in large letters in our daily calendar: CLEAN FAMILY ROOM!!!!!!!!!!! The number of exclamation marks following this directive represents approximately how much cleaning we estimate will be needed. The exclamation marks generally take up all the room on the calendar.

On this particular occasion, however, Joe felt another call upon his time. It was imperative, he felt, that this very day, instead of making the family room presentable for our guests' imminent visit, he must set about liberating the 170-year-old fireplace that has been walled up for at least 20 years. Indeed, it was his duty.

This act would involve knocking through the wall of the family room to find the fireplace. The room he was supposed to be cleaning. But the Universal Law of Cleaning when Expecting Company must be obeyed. I began to hear sounds that were not compatible with cleaning, and when I entered the room I noticed -- being an observant sort of person -- that roughly a square foot of the wall was missing. Well, not completely missing. Most if it was strewn all over the floor.

In keeping with the Spousal Confidence Laws of Maryland, I will not divulge the discussion we had when I discovered this situation, but let's just say that it is fortunate that I was not the one holding the ax.

Despite the Universal Law of Cleaning when Expecting Company, I blame this on the real estate agent who sold us the house. His hobby, when not selling houses, was to smash holes in the walls of his historic home to see what might be behind them. He encouraged Joe to take up this hobby himself, enticing him with visions of finding and restoring stone walls and brick fireplaces. "If you don't like what you see," he said, "cover it up and try someplace else." This is the only advice of a real estate professional that Joe has ever followed. I am quite sure, however, that by "cover it up" the man meant restoring a wall to its original appearance, whereas the experiments on our walls are merely covered over with plywood, so that the room appears as if some crazed animal has attempted to smash through the walls in an effort to escape.

I have ceased trying to come up with an explanation for these slabs of plywood on the walls to our guests, and now just ignore them. My only hope is that visitors of both genders will, upon seeing our desecrated walls, instantly recognize the application of the Universal Law.