Obsessive Cleaning

I hate to go away, even for the weekend, and come home to a dirty house. When I come home I want it to be like a hotel with clean sheets and towels. I want the fridge to not contain anything spoiled and the floors to be dust free. It doesn’t always work out that way because dust happens.

Today I did some deep deep cleaning that probably should have been done months ago. We have a six burner gas stove and though I love to cook on it, it is a bear to clean the star shaped burners. I am the only one in the house who notices if they need to be cleaned so I never expect anyone else to attack them.

It took me a good two hours, dawn, power wash, bar keepers friend, a tooth brush and steel wool to clean these things up. At the two hour mark I deemed the job good enough. There was still a bit of baked on blackness on a couple or burner. If I had gotten the Dremel tool put I probably could have got those last bits, but I needed to move on to cleaning out the refrigerator.

If I cleaned the stove extensively every week this job would not get so hard, but it is enough for me to clean the flat surface every night and not get out a speciality dental tool to clean between the burner fingers. There is something so satisfying about doing this though cleaning, but not compelling enough to want to do it weekly.

I would much rather be with friends, or creating or teaching than cleaning. But I would rather clean than come home to a dirty house. Somehow I notice if something is dirty if I have not been home for a few days, as opposed to be able to walk by it and ignore it if I am home all the time. Thank goodness I go away regularly.