My Pandemic Zeal to Clean is Gone

As the second anniversary of the pandemic is a mere two months away I realized that I have lost my zeal for Pandemic cleaning. That first month, when we were all locked at home and it was still cold so I was staying inside, I took on the task to deep clean and clean out things in my house that needed it. My bathrooms had never been so sparkly. Using a straight edge razor I removed all the clear caulking on the glass wall of the shower and replaced it with a perfectly applied clear bead. Every inch of grout was deep cleaned to a blinding white.

Drawers were cleaned out, and vacuumed before being reorganized. Places were dusted that had not seen the light of day since their original placement, like behind the TV in the linen press in our bedroom. It felt productive and satisfying to clean everything so throughly when we had no control on what was going on in the bigger world outside our doors.

Well, the satisfaction of cleaning my own house has certainly worn off. Today I noticed that the glass in the shower needed to be cleaned. Rather than making up a batch of homemade glass cleaner and scouring the glass with a microfiber rag twice, I just sprayed some store bought cleaner and squeegeed it off. Rather than inspecting it with the eye of a drill Sargent I just walked away. Tonight when I came back in the room I noticed what a half assed job I had done. No surprise. I know what it really takes to clean soap scum from glass, but I didn’t even attempt to do the job right.

I guess the only good thing about the pandemic, the zeal to clean like I’ve never cleaned before, has gone. This is especially disturbing to me since I look around and see so many things that need the deep cleaning treatment. I have to say that I am impressed that the original pandemic thoroughness lasted almost two years with lots of regular weekly cleaning. But now I can’t not see cobwebs on the stringers of chairs we don’t use or dust on light bulbs in chandeliers.

Now that I see all that I need to get working on it, but now I am busy and don’t have whole idle days to fill with something useful. It’s time to come up with some system that tricks me into deep cleaning again. Back in the old days when Russ wanted me to clean off the kitchen counters he would say, “I think we should have some people over for dinner.” Russ never really wanted people to come over, he just knew if we were having people over then I would clean off the counters.

It’s so sad that I am missing those early pandemic days. Maybe what I really am missing is that uber clean and organized house. Saddest thing is that no one ever saw my house that clean and I guess they never will.