On Cleaning (A Kitchen Counter)

and other things

It might seem at the outset that cleaning is a straightforward activity, a straightforward skill, requiring no prerequisite training. One might think that to be able to clean, one must simply be willing to clean and that anyone who begins at any point in their lives can skip straight to cleaning in the best way possible (as the only way one can clean), but this is not the case. In fact, to maintain a basic level of cleaning is a precarious feat of raging simplicity. Although effortless in its appearance, this is a place reaching which requires undertaking a cumbersome journey. To take care of a thing, to participate in the upkeep of an inanimate object is akin to watering your plants, is akin to infusing life into a willingly dying (inanimate) being, capable, otherwise, of potential immortality.

The real cleaning, hence, and not the obsessive kind even, requires years and years of practice, meditative repetition, and facing the behemoth of the deepest part of your own consciousness. It requires a love of freshness, and of rebirth - of scraping clean the death off living and un-living things, to make way for new, infant life. So, to clean, you must learn to nurture, to forgive, to love, and to let go.

To even begin to approach cleaning a space can overwhelm one, because not only is there no real idea on how to begin, there is often also no idea about the sequence in which one must act on this. There may be several schools of thought on how to clean a space, but almost all schools of thought eventually agree on one common design of sequence. In fact, they come to this conclusion in their individual lives and vacuums - attesting to a sort of objective truth about cleaning, and to existentialists, perhaps life itself.

To clean a messy kitchen, for instance, has its own set of principles. Dry, wet, and dry - things must be cleaned in this order, removing the bigger chunks first, then the dust, then the residue which rests on surfaces as a result of the mixture of dust, warm air, and moisture + oils, and then the last dry wipe to seal off your efforts. The second step in this process can very well be achieved by using warm, even hot water. Hot water cleans things otherwise achieved only by the use of toxic chemicals - a devilish preference you should avoid at all costs. The drying, either by hand (microfiber and nothing else, because in the evolution of towels, microfiber is perhaps the first time towels have achieved perfectly that which they set out to do) or by exposing it to direct sunlight, is absolutely necessary in this process and must not be left to the assumption that the process is done simply when wet wiping a space. Unless, as mentioned, there is direct access to sunlight.

Once you do this, I promise you - Just as you infuse life into your things by taking care of them, they will reflect the same onto you. And mind you, things that seem lifeless will come to life, and die, depending on whether or not you care for them.

This essay has/had all the makings of a larger essay, but today, I will leave this be here as it is. I hope you find in this an incomplete feeling, like I did, and I hope hence you and I will learn to live with it - an unfinished thought, a meeting without a goodbye. And then when the time is right, you may wipe it clean with a micro-fiber cloth.

Featured Image: Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s “Maintenance Art Performances”