Thursday, July 22, 2010

I'm blind to it

I decided to do some cleaning up this week. I usually use the gradual approach to housework, where I’ll let everything get about as dirty as possible and then work on cleaning it over several days while doing stuff adjacent to the mess.


So I decided to clean the kitchen for a change. I usually do this while cooking because doing either by themselves is too boring for me. I often need to have two activities going at once. I watch TV and read at the same time. I sleep and sleepwalk. I eat and write. As I am writing this I will flick across several websites. My brain just works like this.


So I am cleaning and cooking, and over the course of doing this over a couple of days through various meals I get the mountain of dishes under control, and have the kitchen to a Dave level of cleanliness (exactly equal to a female ‘this is disgusting’ level). And a day or so later I scan the room to see if it’s worth cooking and cleaning of if I should just order pizza, when I realize something. There is a dirty pot on the stove that I never even moved to the sink. I wondered why for a moment when it occurred to me I hadn’t moved it because I hadn’t noticed it, and that the reason I hadn’t noticed it is because I wasn’t the one who used it, and therefore it is invisible to me!


Seriously invisible! The truth of the matter is I don’t clean for myself one little bit. I am more than happy to live in absolute squalor. If I lived the way my instincts want me to I would use nothing but plastic cutlery and paper plates, drink from the cans and bottles, never clean the bathroom no matter how disgusting it got, and take the trash out once a month or so. It’s not that I am gross it’s that I am a guy, and we have better things to do, like watching sports and eating deep fried things. A clean house doesn’t add to your life it only takes valuable time away.


I was thinking about this when I was looking at that dish. Why do I clean what I do clean? Purely and simply it is because I don’t want to get in trouble for leaving a mess that someone else has to clean and I don’t want people to know how disgusting I really am. Every bit of cleaning I do is how much it takes to do the very minimum I can do to try and facilitate those two goals.


When I look at a mess my mind is now finally tuned to only see the things I made and therefore the things I can be judged on. I can’t get in trouble for a pot someone else left so I literally don’t even see it.


I wonder if this is just the unique me, but I suspect that it is the same in every guys brain. The lesson is if I ever live with a significant other come visit me, if the place is a mess I’m in a happy relationship; if it’s clean I need help getting out please.


Also I saw ghostworld, or ghostland or whatever the Ricky Gervais one is in the past week and that dudes apartment in that movie was spotless, not a single item of clothing on the ground, now dirty dishes in the sink, and before the character is even revealed I know he is going to be very stuck in his ways, close minded, controlling, and selfish. That’s what really clean guys are like. So my advice to the ladies is think twice before you complain about your messy partners, for one he literally can’t see the mess, and if it was different he’d probably be a controlling prick.