How to Keep Your Apartment Super Clean

I’ve finally figured out how to keep my apartment clean and ready for drop-in company at any moment. Step one: Have a second cousin and her husband invite themselves over one Friday afternoon for a tour of the complex and to catch up on family news. I was excited to do it and needless to say I worked hard at spit shining my apartment so it looked its best. I used to babysit her and her three siblings---two sets of twins and let me tell that’s not an easy task for a young teenager and if I’m not mistaken that’s when I came up with the slogan that I’ve literally used ever since those bygone days of: “I won’t babysit anyone who isn’t old enough to say, ‘My stomach hurts. I need to go to the hospital.’”  

Step two in how to keep my apartment spic and span: Have that same cousin want to come back the following Friday to look at and identify old family photos and to include my oldest niece in the process. 

Before the first Friday it took me two days to get my apartment looking its best---dusting and cleaning the floors, the bathrooms and kitchen because it came when I couldn’t have the benefit of my monthly “Environmental Specialist” aka cleaning woman’s scheduled stop. I didn’t want to repeat the two days of cleaning so in between the two Fridays I was extra careful not to mess things up again…and that’s the secret. From now on I’m going to require someone to stop by every Friday. Heck, if I could wave a magic wand and make that happen I could fire my cleaning lady who, by the way, had barely anything to clean this month since I was on her schedule the following Monday morning after the second Friday. Both of those Friday visits, by the way, were full of joy and we made plans for a couple of summer get-togethers. 

Isn’t it silly (or maybe cleaver) that the management calls our cleaning service people 'Environmental Specialists?' I suppose its meant to give them more pride and prestige and I can imagine that title has a practical application for the young and single Environmental Specialists out on the town trying to pick up members of the opposite sex. When they first opened this continuum care complex and we had our first monthly Resident Dialogues meeting with the management, on the agenda was a line about introducing us to the Environmental Specialist team and no one sitting around me could figure out what that position was.

We get the cleaning service free and can’t change our dates of service. And even if I wanted to I couldn’t fire my ES nor could I get a rebate if I canceled. Trust me, people here in the CCC have tried. They has a list of things they can’t clean that would be considered deep cleaning in most people’s lives but some residents have too high of expectations, in my opinion. It’s a basic cleaning meant to keep our kitchens and bathroom from making us sick from germy surfaces and our floors mopped and vacuumed. One man got so mad that the management wouldn’t give him a $40 credit for not allowing the ES into his apartment that he put a chair outside his door and expected the cleaning woman to sit there for the whole hour and half she was scheduled to clean his place. “Since I have to pay for her time anyway.” Another woman---our resident MAGA fan---is so distrusting of cleaning people that she won’t leave them alone in a room because she thinks “they’ll steal you blind.” I’m pretty darn sure that everyone working here has to pass a background check so that doesn’t concern me. Still, I’m not naive either and I lock my filing cabinet on cleaning day where everything needed to steal my identity is kept. And after spending five or ten minutes talking to my ES I’ll walk over the the cafe for coffee.

We’ve had three different cleaners since I moved in two years ago. The first one was a fresh-off-the-boat Irish immigrant. She got moved to cleaning on our sister campus because so many people complained about her. I felt badly for her and thought she was a victim of the residents' unrealistic expectations for places like this. Next we got a black guy aka Mr. Eye Candy who left to start his own cleaning company. He was one of the best cleaners I’ve been around. Our management just subcontracted his new company to clean our carpets in the spring. The young black girl who replaced him has the same aspirations of starting her own service. Both are super nice kids. (I’m old, anyone under 35 is a kid.)

I personally think our forced cleaning service is an excuse for the management to check on us seniors. To make sure we aren’t turning into hoarders (we do have one here) or otherwise inviting bugs and mice in or doing dangerous stuff like burning candles or smoking (we have one of those, too) or leaving burners turned on or having an unregistered pet that isn't being fed or walked outside for potty breaks. If my theory is right, I’m not unhappy about that. Some of us seniors need a Big Brother watching over us. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. ©

P.S. Our resident smoker was recently sent to a hypnotist, but claims it didn’t work. Management is sending him back for a second session. In the meantime he’s supposed to only smoke on his deck which is so much better than him trying to hide in the closet where he smoked before. He’s in his mid 80s and I’m glad we don’t live in the same building. The hoarder lives in my building and I’m guessing the fire department will give her a health and well-being citation when they inspect the smoke alarms and sprinklers next summer.

The Man in the Shower Stall

The day was filled with crisp sunshine---the kind that leaves strong contrasts between the blueish gray shadows and the sparkling brightness of clean, white snow that fell the night before. I was alone in the cafe` eating a bowl of cauliflower soup so I hardly noticed the pristine beauty outside the window. I was enjoyed a rare moment around my continuum care campus when I got to write longhand in my notebook, the way I used to do at the Guy Land Cafeteria. I could see a gathering of office workers out in the lobby but they didn’t bother me nor did the concierge lady sitting on the other side of a glass wall. The maintenance men were setting up chairs in front of the fireplace for the Resident Dialogue meeting. I came down for an early lunch so afterward I could nab one of the chairs nearest to the roaring fire before the meeting got started. It’s the warmest place I’ve been able to find on these fridge Michigan days. The high that day was 12 degrees.

Our CEO opened the meeting up with a joke about how in the military they’d call meetings like this ‘Pitch-and-Bitch’ sessions but he prefers Resident Dialogue which is better than what he calls our cleaning services around here which is Environment Services. Don’t think that didn’t have us all scratching our heads, thinking it had something to do with recycling. At the meeting we were introduced to a new cleaning lady who is actually a black guy in his mid-twenties, a handsome young man who looks like he could grace the cover of a fitness magazine and, no, I have not imagined him without his shirt on. I’ll save that fantasy for warmer weather. 

So there I was with that inappropriate thought about a shirtless cleaning guy tucked in the back of my head when out of the blue someone at the dinner table that night said she didn’t think the Environmental Service guy will fit in her shower. I was shocked thinking her mind had taken her deeper into Fantasy Land than I had gone but then she added, “He’s too big to get down on his hands and knees to scrub that floor.” After getting my head out of the proverbial gutter, my next thought was that she’s more delusional than I am because I seriously don’t think any cleaning person in a place like this is going to do corners and grout to satisfy a bunch of women who’ve been cleaning their own homes for 50-60 plus years. At the meeting a couple of people tried to talk the CEO into letting them clean their own apartments and knock $40 off their monthly maintenance fee but it was a hard ‘NO!’ to that suggestion. I wasn’t surprised. Call me paranoid but I’m guessing the mandatory cleaning service person also looks for old people issues that are signs of trouble ahead: hoarding, rotten food piling up, burners left on, use of candles or Voodoo Dolls, signs of rodents, bugs and pet neglect. Fine by me if Big Brother is watching. I didn’t move here to live off the grid which it felt like I was doing before with the lack of human contact I was getting.

Remember the campus pastor who was in my painting class and I wanted to nickname her Miss Labradoodle but I didn’t out of fear that readers who aren’t ‘dog people’ wouldn’t recognize that as a high compliment? Labradoodles are friendly and sweet and always eager to please so I named her Ms Angel instead. She spoke at the Residents Dialogue meeting about a weekly thing she's starting. 

It's a fifteen minute guided meditation that is centered on nurturing spiritual grown withing ourselves" and it's open to people of all faiths or "no faith if you're a searcher." A searcher? How’s that for a new label and canned answer for me to use when I’m asked the Dreaded Church Question? “I’m a searcher.” Ohmygod that woman could have me turning in my Agnostic Club card if I’m exposed to her often enough. Thankfully we don’t live in the same building because with the exception of her calling as a pastor I want to be just like her when I grow up. She reminds me of my dad, always willing and able to extinguish any negative energy floating about.

On our schedule today is a live-steaming event billed as ‘Keeping It Nuanced: How to Have Grace-Filled Political Conversations.’ I’d love to go to that but today is the first time in awhile that the temperatures are going to be high enough for me to venture out to the big box grocery store. Those temperatures in the teens and below are too hard on my lungs. So I’m off to where it’s going to kill me to buy a muffin pan and a humidifier because I had both before the Big Downsizing of 2021. ©  

Birds, Diuretics, Anti-Vaxxers and Fan-Girling Baseball

 Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday went by with a good deal of guilt tagging along behind me. Guilt because I feel like I’m wasting time. I’m in a holding pattern where I don’t want to start packing or selling and giving away art and furniture I used for staging the house because I still don’t have a firm appointment for a closing. (We are one step closer though, the appraisal came back $2,000 higher than the offer I accepted.)  

And I’m worried I might spill my morning coffee on the carpeting or break something now that the house presumptuously will belong to someone else soon and I’ll be like a squatter living rent free for up to 60 days while someone else is making mortgage payments. I asked the realtor what happens if, say, a tree falls down? Do I just have it cut up and hauled away? "They'd notice it missing." He said I’d need to call the new owners and ask them how they wanted to handle anything that gets broken or damaged during the 60 days possession period. "It’s their house, their decision."

I’ve started a mental list of all the things I’m going to miss about this house. Birds ranked in the top ten---added on the list when a white-breasted nuthatch landed on my deck railing and he brought with him a wave of sentimental attachment for all the birds that are attracted to my yard. Over the years I’ve cataloged twenty-five species of birds that hang around this place. In the early evening if I sit on the deck wearing my hearing aids their songs and calls drown out all thoughts and it’s almost effortless to live in the moment. I’m taking my bird call with me but I don’t expect it will get me into the same Man-Bird “conversations” I’ve come to enjoy here. But I might trick the neighbors into thinking their eyesight is getting bad when they can’t spot the ‘bird’ calling its mate.

Did I mention I’m sitting at the Guy Land Cafeteria right now, another high ranking thing I will miss after I move? I stopped on the way home from a doctor’s appointment because it was 3:00 and I hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch. I was trying to fool his scales into believing I’d lost a few pounds in the two months since I saw him last. But both my blood pressure and my weight were exactly the same causing me to curse the fact that I’ve given up oriental food, salty snacks and cookies for absolutely nothing. The doctor decided it's time to add another drug to the mix to lower my blood pressure---oh, God a diuretic. Could I pee anymore often than I already do? I know where every single restroom is between home and every place I go. If reincarnation is real I want to come back as a man just so I can pee in a bottle.

My house cleaners were here this week but the house was pretty much still spotless from the showings so I had one of them clean the oven for the new owners. They came to the door carrying their masks and asked if they needed to wear them. I replied, “The Delta variation of the virus is in our county now, so, ya, I’d like you to wear them.” They are anti-vaxxers to the core. “We don’t like the government telling us what to do.” One of them said her uncle just got vaccinated and sent her a picture of a magnet stuck to his vaccination spot. Rather than believe the obvious, that her uncle was poking fun at her anti-vaxxer miss-information, she’d rather believe the government is involved in a vast conspiracy to make us all tractable with magnetic chips. You can’t argue with stupid and I didn’t even try.

Apparently, they’d just lost a large job of cleaning rooms in a motel because the owner only wanted vaccinated cleaners and the cleaning service owner (who was one of my cleaners that day) told the motel owner that she refuses to ask her workers if they’ve gotten vaccinated. "It's none of my business what they do with their bodies," she told me and her former client. Then she said her sister-in-law who works for an OBGYN is “being forced to quit her job of 30 years because she won’t get vaccinated. What an outrage!" I kept my mouth shut because one does not disagree with someone on a rant who could use your tooth brush to clean your toilet.

I’ve written seven hundred and thirty words to here. What can I add to get my writing quota up to 1,000? I could list a few more things I will miss after I move but I don’t want to dwell on that aspect of moving. I’m way past the point where a pros-and-cons list serves a useful purpose. I’ve already caught myself on the verge of crying once while thinking about all the memories associated with this house.

How about I report on my project to teach myself about major league baseball? I’ve watched a game just about every night since I made that declaration. The basics of the game I pretty already knew but I’m still trying to sort out the different kinds of pitches and I’ve printed out a list of baseball slang so when an announcer says things like, “He threw a cookie” I'll have a clue what’s going on. I'm also still trying to figure out why runners throw themselves on the ground and slide to a base instead of just keep running to get there. And are some of those guys wearing man-thongs because they don't all have the telltale underwear lines. And can we talk about the germs they pass around in baseball? What's with all the spitting? One guy even rubbed his spit all over his bat and I doubt he washed his hands before he was out in the field catching a ball in the next inning.

But the most interesting thing I’ve learned about baseball is how easy it is to fall asleep during a game. It makes me smile every time I catch myself waking up when the crowd gets loud because it brings back warm memories of my dad doing the same thing while nestled in his sleepy hollow, red leather chair. He could be snoring but would wake up if we tried to change the channel or turn the volume down and I'm starting to fan-girl those crowd sounds playing in the background of my life. ©

Wasted Week and Wildflower Seeds

 Aside from having two rail-thin women come to the house to wash my living room and dining room walls, it’s been a week of few accomplishments. How thin is rail-thin you ask? If either one of them ate a grape she'd looked pregnant, but boy were they hard workers. They knocked that huge job out in one hour, fifteen minutes (each) and it only cost me $75. The place smells Spic & Span amazing, looks even better than I’d hoped because we ‘de-cowboyed’ the place as we went along. De-cowboying the place consisted of taking down a series of small, scratchboard portraits of cowboys playing poker and a couple of sun-bleached animal skulls and moving some western sculptures into the library where they'll wait to get listed soon on e-Bay.

I still have six larger signed and numbered western prints hanging on the walls---most by well-known artists but they are staying, probably through the open house. Not sure yet. The realtor thinks they should stay---it's too big a wall to be empty---but if I can sell them beforehand, I might. One of the prints, a large Paul Collins lithograph drawing of the legendary Holy Eagle, I’ve always said I’d push it around in a shopping cart if I was ever homeless and I’m still hoping I can find room to hang it in my future home. I’ll have to see where the light switches in my new place are at before I’ll know one way or the other. It doesn't fit the beach cottage theme I want but maybe I'll have to pretend the old guy is my great-grandfather.

The two women have been in the cleaning business for a while now but I taught them something. They started out just using rags and a tall ladder so I dug out my round-headed mop and showed them how they could do most of the walls without using the ladder. After doing the rooms with my mop they were so impressed they said they were going to buy themselves a couple of mops like mine. Even with my cathedral ceilings it only took a step stool for them to reach the peaks. It was quite the time saver and safer not to have to move an eight foot ladder around.

Then they impressed me with their method of cleaning glass which truly amazed me. Over the last few years, I have not been able to get streaks out of windows and I couldn’t decide if they’ve change the formula for Windex that I’ve been using since I was big enough to help my dad every spring and fall with the Storm Windows Project or if paper towel is being made differently causing the problem. I suspected it was the Windex because even using the old stand-by of newspapers wasn’t doing the trick. Nothing short of going over the streaks with vinegar on a soft cloth helped and that was slow going. The ladies were using Norwex cloths with just water, no Windex or other cleaning product and getting the glass on my art prints to shine, streak free in just a minute or two. The stupid cloths cost a small fortune but as soon as the reward points show up on my Amazon card from paying for Levi’s last day on earth I’m going to invest in a Norwex glass set at the tune of $34.00 for two cloths.

It will be weird spending all those reward points and I wish I needed something big and costly so I could spend them all at once, get it over with like pulling a band aide off. Gee, your dog died? Here’s a bunch of free stuff from Amazon as a reward. I just thought of something costly...a new cell phone but as often as we need our phones, do I really want to be reminded of how I got it, if I use my rewards points that way? It’s my mom’s fault. She’s the one who taught me how to save and pigeonhole money for certain things. Moms are always to blame, no matter what. In my entire life I've always thought in terms of I bought that with the money I got doing this or selling that. And paycheck money was always used for the 'needs' in life, and money that came from selling stuff or doing odd jobs could be spent for the 'wants' in life.

I got the sweetest sympathy card from Levi's vet. Inside it had a piece of pressed cotton in the shape of a paw that said "Plant me, I will bloom." It's full of wildflower seeds. It took me back to the day when we spread my mom's ashes with a box of 1,000 wild flower seeds along side a walking path my folks frequently took around our cottage. I think I'll plant Levi's seeds at my future home. On a 40 acre campus with woods and a lake I should be able to find a place I can sneak them in. How cool would that be.

I’m doing fine, although this past week has zapped all my energy as I try to re-imagine what my future will look like---with or without another fur baby. I don’t feel like I have a lot of time to decide because if I’m going to get one I should do it while I’m still living in a single family home where training would be so much easier. ©