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Smith Says

Published Tuesday, August 03, 2010 3:29 PM

By Julie R. Smith
Summerville Journal Scene ®

When I was a child, my mother loved spring cleaning. In fact, she enjoyed cleaning anytime, anywhere. Even when she visited other people’s houses, she’d casually pick up a washrag and a can of Comet and take a swipe at the kitchen sink. Most folks were either too stunned or grateful to protest.

Mama loved being a housewife. She’d hum while beating rugs, and dance in the kitchen while waxing the floor. (I can still recall the soapy, industrial scent of Future floor wax—“for a tough shine that stands up to scuff marks!”)

She sang Doris Day tunes while defrosting the freezer. She’d check my spelling homework while canning pole beans, and crack jokes while washing the dog. Yes, Mama was a marvel, a regular cleaning dervish.

But there was one chore she dreaded: cleaning out the kitchen cupboards.

She’d fret about it for days: “I’ve got to shovel out those cabinets,” she’d mutter. “Lord have mercy.”

Then, on the day and hour of her choosing, she’d light a cigarette, squint dolefully and start snatching cans and packages out of the cabinets, tossing them in the sink and on countertops.

“Go outside and play,” she’d bark at me, and off I went.

“Mama, it’s snowing,” I protested once.

“Then sit in the utility room!” she snapped. “The dog will keep you warm.”

Banned from this odious procedure, I never knew why the perfect housewife hated clearing the cupboards. Until that is, I had my own.

Today, anyone who knows me will tell you I did not inherit my mother’s passion for cleaning. I’m passionate about exercise, good books and old houses, but not mopping floors or washing cabinets. And I will never dust the living room at 3 a.m. because I can’t sleep, like a certain 81-year-old woman I know.

Housework doesn’t come naturally to me but I do make an effort, which my husband appreciates. Every now and then he’ll point out drifts of dog hair in the dining room, or politely enquire if I plan to empty the kitchen trashcan this month. But mostly he’s tolerant of my slapdash housekeeping.

Thus I was mildly surprised but not startled last week when he asked me to clean out the kitchen cupboards. I’m so short I put away groceries by lobbing them at the shelves and hoping for the best. Widdle, being taller, knew what a wasteland it was.

I grabbed a garbage can, all-purpose cleaner and a couple of sponges to tackle the cupboards above the washer and dryer where we keep nonperishables… and also, it turns out, stained cookbooks, mismatched utensils, a giant wad of plastic grocery bags and orphaned Tupperware.

Ah, here’s the food: Eleven Ramen noodle cups. A jar of home-canned figs that’s leaking ominously. A layer of crushed saltine crackers. There’s a peeling paper box crammed with cracked plastic forks. Three cans of store-brand beans that Widdle hated, two sticky, crystallized jars of honey, dried spaghetti spilling out of the overturned box. A Kraft chicken-noodle dinner than went off the market in 1995. Several yellowed recipes clipped from newspapers (stuck to the leaky figs.) And, dear God, are those mice teethmarks on the corner of the cereal box whose contents expired in 2008?

Now I understand mama and the cupboards. I’m living out her legacy.

I don’t smoke, but I’ve got the squint down.

Julie R. Smith, who’d rather eat dirt than clean house, can be reached at widdleswife@aol.com.

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