Something Rich and Strange

Having just returned from almost a week away from home on business, and still battling the last vestiges of what surely must have been the H1N1 virus (when I get sick, no run of the mill illness for me), the last thing I want to do is housework. Well, the truth is that housework is always the last thing I want to do, regardless of health or other circumstances. So when confronted with dust bunnies the size of tumbleweeds and an accumulation of cat hair on upholstered surfaces that gives them the appearance of being made of mohair, there is only one thing I can do: watch “Clean House.” For those of you not familiar with this fine program, it is basically an hour-long intervention for those with chronic hoarding syndrome. So rooms that are no longer navigable due to piles of assorted dust-gathering treasures that their owners can’t bear to part with (from a closet full of Sour Patch kids sure to be worth a fortune someday to multiple non-functioning appliances and everything in between) are excavated and transformed into spruced-up models of functionality and style. And lest you think I’m being too hard on these folks, keep in mind that they unashamedly nominate themselves for having the “messiest house in America.”

But today I had an epiphany about why I turn to “Clean House” instead of the Dyson. It’s not really for inspiration, as I’ve been telling myself. It’s the Schadenfreude. Because no matter how neglected my apartment is, with a week’s worth of the Washington Post piled by the door, an overflowing laundry hamper or an entire month of Horchow catalogues cluttering my coffee table (typically, 50+), it’s nothing that can’t be rectified with a couple hours of elbow grease and a Swiffer or two. No team of hazmat clad cleaning pros is necessary. Just willpower to stop blogging about it get to work. Scrubbing Bubbles, anyone?