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Mendelson lacks ambivalence about assuming a place in her homemaking dynasty. I, on the other hand, am still making peace with my ancestral housekeeping ghosts.

Some parts of keeping house I've got licked. I'm obsessive about neat drawers. Mixing colors and whites in the washing machine is sacrilege. Meticulous about folding laundry, I can out-fold anyone in America. (That includes you, Cheryl.) I stack food in the cabinets by size and category and have the weekly shopping down to a science.

I'm not big on mending. Not great with dusting. Don't sweep in hard-to-reach places. And the only time I turn the mattresses is when we move. (Mendelson recommends turning mattresses once a season; when I tell my mother this she responds with horror, insisting, "I turn the mattress once a month." There you go.)

For overall upkeep, I'm on the yo-yo plan. I swear I'm going to be good, starting Monday. Then, I put it off until Wednesday. The mess increases. I set myself a point at which I must begin cleaning -- let's say when I can no longer see the floor in my daughter's room. Soon after, giddiness sets in, followed by no longer caring and, then, dementia, when I decide to see how bad it can get.

Finally, I'm forced to take action -- because company is coming. I put a few things away. Momentum builds and I start filling garbage bags. Then I start to clean. I see dirt that I was blind to for days, for weeks. I'm disgusted. I'm penitent. I dig out the cleaning products, pay homage to my foremothers by donning rubber gloves and scrubbing the toilet.

Afterward, catharsis. The living room looks so pure. I steer my kids away from playing in it. The empty sink is such an inspiring void I don't dare leave a dirty dish anywhere near it. Slowly, however, the tide of schmutz begins to rise, and the cycle begins again.

It doesn't help that my husband is domestically challenged. He can pass a bursting bag of garbage, positioned blatantly by the door, without even considering taking it out. He prefers chairs to hangers when it comes to putting away his clothes. He leaves his wet towel draped over the bedpost every morning. And when he's stuck in the house with the kids alone: cyclone time. (To be fair, when he puts his mind to it he can clean with the best of them: He scours a mean tub and vacuums like an Olympian. But I have to plead with him to do these things, which he considers a favor to me.)

Having two kids, ages 5 and 2, doesn't help, either. Nothing short of straitjacketing them would keep my apartment in order for more than 10 minutes. (Mendelson, I'm certain, does not have a child under 5; if she does, I'll just kill myself now.) Having children, I once heard on the car radio as I was racing to pick one kid up after dropping off the other, decreases marital satisfaction by 75 percent. Of course, marital satisfaction is a relative phrase. In my husband's universe, it means sex. In mine, it means swept floors.

"Why aren't we ever romantic with each other anymore?" he demands.

"Why can't you ever clean the kitchen in under three hours?" I growl.

Ultimately, keeping the house in order is about feeling in control. For my grandmothers, my mother, my cousins, it was and is about asserting their values in the domain in which they feel most powerful. It's about creating shelter from the storm of the outside world. It's about sweeping the cobwebs of sickness, sadness and tragedy out of the corners and over the threshold for as long as possible. It's about keeping chaos at bay.

I tolerate chaos in my big, fat, sloppy life in ways my relatives don't. But I still feel overwhelmed. There's a solution to this. I can hire someone to help me clean. And I plan to, just as soon as my financial ship comes in, right after I pay off my credit card debt and right before I buy a car that starts without my having to pray to it every morning.

I have a vision of household perfection: guest towels in the bathroom without peanut butter handprints on them. Little soaps in a delicate dish by the sink. Wood floors that gleam. Beds that stay made. A dining room table sans clumps of hardened oatmeal. Cassettes, CDs and videos that never, ever get separated from their boxes. A sense of peace when I walk into the apartment, the only thing in motion a stray dust mote swirling in a patch of sun.

I imagine I may achieve this in increments: as my 2-year-old grows out of pushing the puzzles I have just stacked on a shelf right back onto the floor; as I have more time to work and earn money to pay someone to help me. I run my fingers across the glossy pages of the "Hold Everything" catalog, and dream.

In the meantime, my grandmothers tsk-tsk from the beyond.
salon.com | Feb. 15, 2000

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