“I feel like I have to learn how to keep my house clean,” my friend Kristi huffed as she pushed a loaded stroller up a hill at the zoo. “It’s not a skill that’s taught anymore.”
“I know,” I muttered next to her, wiping sweat off my brow. “I need lessons. Sometimes I want to hire a cleaning lady just to follow her around and see what she does.”
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This conversation was still echoing in my mind two weeks ago when my family and I visited Charlottesville, Virginia, during our vacation to the East Coast. We had planned to stay with some friends, but then they suggested we stay in their neighbor’s house, as their neighbors were on vacation and had offered it to us.
I fell in love with that house as soon as we stepped inside. The rough-hewn farmhouse table, the rustic-modern chandelier, the gardening prints on the wall, the potted plants on the window seat — the house was an aesthetic delight. Around the house I found endless bookshelves, large windows, and cozy textures.
Yet what astonished me just as much was how clean their house felt. The floors under my feet were crumb-free and shining. The bathroom didn’t have a trace of stray hair or dust. In the bedrooms, a tidily-folded set of clean sheets sat on the bare mattress, awaiting the family home from vacation — or awaiting random visitors who might occupy their house in the meantime. In the kitchen, the counters were sparkling with just a few Mason jars of grains arranged in one corner.
I finally found a little bit of dirt in the vegetable drawers in the fridge, and I actually felt relief!
“So did your neighbors get their cleaning lady to clean their house after they left for vacation?” I asked my friends, trying to sound casual.
“No, she cleans everything herself. Isn’t their home amazing?”
So who are they? A middle-aged couple with a young son; the husband is a professor and the wife currently stays home. That is still about all I know about them — except now I have gotten a rare and unique peek inside their home. A peek that the housewife did not expect or anticipate.
She left the house how she likes it, clean and tidy and ready to welcome herself and her family home. We got to slip in and be welcomed in the meantime.
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I am not a natural neat-freak. I generally do most of my tidying up before guests arrive, and that is only because it needs to be done sometime and I am a cleaning procrastinator — so why do it until you absolutely must?
If I visit your home, I will not judge you for your dust bunnies or your unmade beds or your dishes in the sink; those things will make me feel at home.
Yet over time I have begun to slowly mature in my delight in a clean home, my desire to vacuum more than once a week, my enjoyment of clean sheets and fresh towels, my need for order and space and everything in its place. I have realized I don’t really know how to keep a clean and tidy home. It was not something that my clean and tidy mother handed down to me like she did her blue eyes and brown hair. It was not something I have chosen to learn.
But now, refreshed and inspired, I’d like to learn. Maybe the solution would be to hire a cleaning lady, but I’d like to try myself first. I’d like to teach myself the age-old art of homekeeping, of maintaining a cleaning schedule to keep my sheets washed and my light fixtures dusted, of knowing when something is dirty and how to clean it, of knowing when something is broken and how to fix it (or who to call to help me!).
Honestly, I think part of this mental shift has happened through living in Coronado. Coronado residents work hard to keep their town clean and neat, with trimmed hedges and clipped lawns, swept streets and tidy parks, golden beaches and white surf. The Flower Show every spring is the perfect opportunity for the community to make itself beautiful. In many ways, it’s a clean-up and beautification contest!
What happens inside our Coronado homes, though, is entirely our own business. We live in close proximity to our neighbors, yes — but unless we invite them indoors, they never see how we keep our houses. They admire and vote on our yards all April long — but the insides of our houses are up to us.
Now, just like I enjoy throwing open the windows to let the sea breeze fill the house, I want to let the tidy beauty of Coronado infiltrate my home. I want it to be clean, open, inviting. I want to welcome my neighbors over and not worry too much about cat hair and crumbs — because I’ve already cleaned them up. I want to teach myself to scrub and scour well so that it becomes a habit, a routine, a way of life — not so that I can find something else to cause stress or anxiety, but so that I can learn something new, build better habits, improve our lives, and make our home even more welcoming, lovely, and ready to be enjoyed.
Living in Coronado is a privilege, and I want to enjoy every aspect of it — from jogs along the bay in the morning to a glass of wine in my clean kitchen every night. It might take some work to get there, but I checked Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook out of the library and I’m ready to learn!
If I don’t make it with Martha, though, I might be writing an article about cleaning ladies pretty soon….
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“Coronado Living” is a weekly column written by one of eCoronado.com’s staff writers, Becca Garber. She writes about choosing simplicity and practicing hospitality with her family at home in Coronado. You can read more of her writing on her blog.
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Becca Garber
Staff Writer
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