Enfin Clean

OMG my house looks SOOO clean!!! I've finally decided that housework and me don't mix. We don't mix on a week day, we don't mix on a Saturday morning. We especially don't mix when the alternative is vastly reduced taxes, a clean house and a cleaner in work.

The deal is that instead of paying a woman on the black which is fine for the payer but the cleaner gets no insurance and doesn't pay into any sort of social regime, you pay a reasonable price and half of it is deducted from your taxes. Everyone's a winner except the fisc's coffers and I'm not too bothered about filling them.

The cleaner is a fully employed member of a company, gets all the social advantages, and becomes an active member of the economy (so the gov gets lots back in VAT), and the client gets a clean house and pays less tax. Who could resist?

So there are all sorts of 'services' companies springing up offering cleaning, DIY, meals, childcare and so on; jobs that before were usually paid in cash, and have now entered the system. I'm amazed that the government has come up with a scheme where everyone is happy. How often does that happen?

I came home today after a blitz on my home - two cleaners for 4 hours. They did an amazing job because, while my house isn't big, it was in need of a good clean and tidy. What's more, one of them is coming back again on Thursday and then again for 4hrs a week thereafter (2x2).

I'll no longer be in a furious temper on Saturday mornings because I'm having to clean, or super clean because I've got people coming for dinner. Oh the joy of not having to do the housework! I'd quite forgotten how blissful it is to come home to a house someone else has cleaned.

I'm going to have to buy a new hoover though. My present one, my old faithful, has been with me since 1995. It was a wedding present and is a UK model upright. The cleaner would prefer something less unwieldy (her words, well, in French), so I thought I might get a mini Dyson or the cheaper equivalent (having seen the price!). When I suggested to my TWDB that I keep the hoover because you never know, and one of the boys might find it useful, he guffawed and said they'd be far too embarrassed to use it!

Actually, by that time you probably wouldn't be able to buy the bags for it, so that would be that. Embarrassed. Huh!

World Despots #1 - Dust

Dust - ever present, impossible to exterminate, infinite in quantity - it's truly a despot of world proportions. You get rid of one batch, and within a few hours another batch has taken it's place. It settles, peacefully, laughing at your attempts to rid it from that unfortunately shiny piece of furniture that you deeply regret buying ever since you realised that it showed EVERY SPEC.

You buy sprays which have a delaying action. The dust just bides its time, lurking in that stupid dust-catching roughcast paint that cheapskate landlords cover interior walls or within the folds of curtains. As soon as you go past, the waft of air dislodges the awaiting dust which, liberated, sails gently down to land on your furniture. Yet again.

It's the inevitability of dust that makes it such a despot. You cannot get rid of it. Ever. Some people are slaves to it, finding the slightest speck unbearable, and rushing around with dusters and sprays attacking every surface with frightening frequency.

Others decide to ignore it and wait for it to form little mats that can just be picked up and thrown away... or not.

Dust is a world despot. It's found everywhere and in many forms - household dust, sand dust, asbestos dust, coal dust, and so on. If it's not a killer itself, it harbours asthma-inducing dust mites. Both children and adults wheeze and gasp for breath, bowing before it's dominance.

For those who loathe housework (like me - had you noticed?), dust is one of the banes of their life. I'm able to ignore it up to a certain point, the point where visitors start sneezing and saying things like 'oh, I'm allergic to dust...' or look pityingly at piano lid. Actually it doesn't often get to that point. Promise... well, not since my TWDB came into my life. He says he's allergic to dust and has even been known to take a duster to the sitting room (I nearly passed out with surprise). Well, once. He's a manager, he delegates...

However, that's really the only way of getting rid of dust, for me. Get someone else to do it.

Otherwise... there's no escape. Ever!

You're N'Ikea'd

Guess where I went this morning...

I'll give you a clue: my current favourite Sunday morning jaunt...

For anyone who guessed 'the dump', bravo, give yourself a peanut. This might make for a boring tale except that it was a tad more exciting than usual because it was shut. Yesterday was August 15 and a national holiday except that lots of shops were open, including Ikea... but it meant that the council dump guys had the weekend off.

And yet, people still had stuff to chuck out. They did not take the weekend off; they were tidying, clearing, decorating, gardening as furiously as ever, and accumulating rubbish. I am still vaguely enthused by my summer spring clean and had attacked the utility room resulting in two bags of rubbish plus other sundry crap. Where does it all come from?!

I have two dumps near me. I went to the nearest first and found it shut so I turned round and went to the other one. That one was shut too, but the fence is down in one spot so you can climb over a big stone quite easily and get in. This, of course, is Not Allowed, but who wants to hang on to smelly rubbish for a week?

There were three other cars when I arrived and the good citizens were calmly, quietly and lawlessly climbing over the big stone to chuck their rubbish in the right container. I did too, rather hoping that the police would not come screeching up the hill, sirens wailing, to arrest us for throwing rubbish in the right containers at the dump which just happened to be inconveniently closed.

My car empty, I scuttled off pleased that my efforts to clean up had not been thwarted by the law...

When you clean up, it's nice to award oneself with a little home improvement too. Having chucked out some old white plates, I wanted to replace them so decided that a little trip to Ikea was just the job. It was open yesterday - I checked on the internet before trekking over there - and not too busy.

I have a love/hate relationship with Ikea. Sometimes when I go there, I can't find what I want and storm through the place in a temper, ignore all the tempting stuff you never knew you needed and leave with empty hands. Yesterday was the opposite. I found exactly what I wanted and then thought of a nice list of other stuff I could do with too to make life easier and pleasanter.

By the time I'd finished, my trolley was encouragingly full of useful items, my budget was not blown, and I even got to use a self-service machine to beep it all through.

My utility room is now cleaner and more organised thanks to the containers I bought, and my living room smells lovely thanks to the candle tray I bought with trendy black sand to encourage me to use the smelly candles that were previously lurking at the back of a cupboard.

Streuth, I might even get to indulge myself in some gracious living by the end of the summer...!

Je procrast, tu procrast

Really, it's a shame there's no sport of procrastination. My youngest is a past master, but then he lives with the Queen of Procrastination and it's obviously in the genes. My eldest is also pretty good but he lacks the steely determination combined with insouciant charm that his brother uses...

Here I am, boyless, TWDB-less and having a pretty calm time of it at work because everyone is on holiday, and am I working on my book? With regret, I have to admit that I'm not even though my TWDB actively encouraged me to get my finger out before he went off on his Big Adventure to the American wild west. While he's grappling with golf-ball size hail and freak storms on a Harley, I'm supposed to be editing away on my pc.

Except that I'm not, and I'm doing the unthinkable instead, which shows what a tip top procrastinator I am... I'm doing a Spring Clean. In summer, yes, blah blah blah so what, the important thing is that I HATE HOUSEWORK so it's an ace act of procrastination.

Mind you, I have to make best use of my enthusiasm while I can because I'm liable to get bored pretty quickly and then I'll end up with everything only half done - a clean oven but mucky racks, no more cobwebs but a raging community of homeless spiders, a spotless kitchen but table strewn with unfiled papers (insurance, car, school, rent etc.) and so on.

One thing that might spur me on if I'm lucky is the knowledge that my TWDB may well come back sooner than expected. My gentle long-drawn out tidy up will have to be curtailed and I always work keenly to a deadline.

Yesterday I took some stuff to the dump. I'm always talking about going to the dump, aren't I? It's because there are periods when I do seem to be quite a regular there and am on pretty matey terms with the guys in charge. Heck, I even went to the dump in the UK - just try and stop me! - after helping to tidy out my parents' garage (again). I dream of a holiday doing bugger all on a comfy sunbed; no cooking, no cleaning, no responsibility, but that is not for me... yet...

So I filled up the Alfa, having put the seats down, with two grotty disintegrating plastic sunbeds and sundry binbags of crap, plus the broken parasol foot weighted down with concrete. I then had to do another run with grotty old plastic garden chairs, boxes of bottles and jars, a box of boxes, old iron (any old...) and the not-so-non-stick frying pan I brought back from Dallas in 1999.

I'm tellin' ya, my book stands no chance!

Home Run

I have sneaked upstairs while the floor downstairs is drying. Sneaked away from who? Well, no one, of course, seeing as I'm my own boss of de house, but old habits die hard, even ones from 30yrs ago. I find it very annoying to find these subconscious issues banging me on the nose when they have no business to be doing so.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I hate housework but that I do it anyway because I'm not a total slob. However, it really grates because I'm having to force myself to put hoover to floor, mop to water and duster to dust. Naturally, I feel guilty at having such a negative attitude to something so banal, but it's the relentless inevitability of it - that and having two boys in the house who are champion mess-makers.

So I battle on, but feel a small victory of relief when a wet floor obliges me to take a break upstairs. I could, of course, be cleaning upstairs too, but I did that the other day (except for hoovering my room thanks to that damned XBox wifi widget thingy), and it hasn't got so bad it needs another bash.

Yesterday, Ulysse infuriated me by catching a mouse and then puking the whole thing up on the floor, followed by a running puking tour around the house for good measure. I felt like puking myself as I cleared it up. My only consolation is that he kept off the beds and the Persian rug. Otherwise he might have ended up a non-cat... My eldest, ever one to wind me up, phoned me to let me know that Ulysse had done this, but declined, politely, my suggestion that he clear it up.

Today he phoned me to let me know that his bike had torn his trousers to shreds, not that I was going to do anything about it. I must get him out of this 'semi-crisis' call habit. Not only is there no point because I'm not going to rush about sorting it out, but it irritates the hell out of me knowing that there is an unpleasant thing awaiting me.

He will be forbidden from calling unless the house is on fire. I don't want to know about vomiting cats, torn trousers, spilt milk (unless it's on the sofa in which case CLEAR IT UP NOW!), XBox issues, muddy shoes, derailed bike chains or any other minor problem.

I do want to know about fire, broken bones, burglary and car theft. That's about it really. I would dash home for those real crises. Anything else can wait, no?

Further suggestions on a postcard please.

A tidy home...

... is a sign of a wasted life? There are some things about living in France that differ in no way from living anywhere else. One of those is housework; inevitable, laborious, tedious, repetitive.

I am not a fan, in general, of housework, but what I detest the most is tidying the boys' bedroom. Today the state of emergency level was bordering on 'unhealthy' so I sent them in to wage war on the total chaos that raged on the floor. Heaven knows what was lurking in there, with its feet up, watching tele with a cup of cocoa, thinking itself safe from a brutal hoovering. Ha! I think NOT!

The boys made a courageous effort, I must admit. They didn't just push the mess under the bed, chest of drawers and other sundry orifices; they picked things up and chucked them in the nearest handy receptical. When we moved in, I had organised their room beautifully (natch!) with a box for cars, one for figures, one for general toys, one for Brio, one for weapons and so on. Would you believe me if I told you such organisation was still in place? No, I thought not, and you'd be correct. Everything is all over the place, and to really tidy it up, it would all have to be tipped out, and rearranged properly.

I went in there, took one look, went out again and decided to unblock the shower. To do such a ghastly, smelly job instead of tidying the bedroom indicates the task that had still to be undertaken... With the shower all sparkling and clean, crappy French plumbing unblocked, and a general air of cleanliness in there, I confronted the bedroom.

The hoover bag was full, and the boys had already hoovered up a bathrobe belt which was blocking the hoover thus rendering it useless. I sorted that out, got a bin bag and set to work, my temper getting worse by the minute. It now looks presentable in there; nothing more. It needs a blitz that I'm not prepared to spend the time or effort on today, especially as the hard work would be invisible a few days hence.

That is what I hate about housework. The crap returns. Where does it all come from, and why don't whole places disappear in the process of being transferred into peoples' homes? You should see the dust I collected off the stairs after one week's usage. Just one week. What hole now exists having been stamped up the stairs and down again? It's one of life's conundrums.

I always feel I could be doing something more interesting when hoovering, cleaning, unblocking. Life is passing me by as I pick up small cars and weapons, again. Instead of spending Saturday afternoons on housework, I could be improving my mind, visiting places, playing an instrument, cycling with the boys, tennis, reading, writing my book. Anything! I'm one of those people who was born to have a woman that does twice a week. Unfortunately, I was not born with the means. Oops, a celestial cockup there...

I used to have a cleaning lady, in more comfortable times. It was joy, pure joy to walk through the door after she'd been and see the house gleaming, tidy and not how I'd left it.

We all have our secret miracles. That one is mine.