Like Mother, Like Daughter

When I am in the mood to clean, I am a force to be reckoned with, no-joke, poker face.

Like, think of the Tasmanian Devil from those cartoons with the wiley wabbit and that Fudd guy, put my face on it, fill my hands with Windex, and BOOM, that's me. I become a tornado of sanitation and domesticity, and if cleanliess is godliness, then I am the Goddess of Detergent.

Don't mess with me when I'm cleaning beause I will throw your ass into my washing machine, line dry you by your hair, and bleach the shit right out of you.

I'm a Filipina, partial and proud, and that's just how we roll.

To say that I am critical when I walk into other people's homes is an understatement of epic proportions. When I walk into your house, I'm looking at the dust on your lampshades and the scratches that you didn't polish off your table, and people, I have x-ray vision, so I can see the unfolded clothes in your closet from the front door. You cannot hide your dirty secrets from me because I will find them, and we can chismis all you want, but I will still be able to see that coffee ring under your mug.

If I walk into your guest bathroom and you have that gunky spittle spattle on your mirror, I will clean it. I will look under your sink to grab that Lysol that better be there, and I will clean your bathroom. That splish splish splish that you hear going on around or near your toilet is me working that brush wand in a counter-clockwise motion to scrub that iron residue down your pipes.

You're welcome.

I would like to walk into a house and not be all Judgey-Mc-Judgester because I know you are all busy, and when you got one/two/three/ten kids and their friends over after school, I bet that it gets messy really quickly because they all got those sticky hands. I get it. I feel for you.

But when you walk into my home, and you tell me that it's too clean, I don't even know what you're saying. It's like you're not speaking English to me, and despite my vernacular of attitude going on here, I know my language, so you really have my head spinning on that one.

I've actually been told this many times before about my bedroom and then my dorm room and then my apartment and now my real, grown-up-married-woman home. When I was growing up with my Filipina mother, my friends and their moms told us the same exact damn thing too.

"It's like nobody lives here it's so clean!"

Bitch, are you kidding me? Of course somebody lives here! How else do you think it got so damn clean? Mice?

My mama scrubbed this floor with her perfectly manicured hands, fool! And she didn't even chip a nail!

Take off your goddamn, Payless shoes before you walk all over it, but keep your socks on so I can watch you slip and slide on the tile!

Here is a towel that can sit between you and my mama's pristine couch, and yes, it's a white motherfucking towel, that way I know how dirty your ass is when I bleach the hell out of it later!

That was me then, and that is still me now.

That is how I feel when you tell me that my home is too clean for you, and depending on how long it took me to vacuum that diamond pattern onto my carpet, I'll probably tell you how I feel because this? All this cleanliness you're gesturing at and complaining about took a lot of skill and practice, practice, practice! This is my Olympic sport, so you can look at my gold medal but you better not touch it.

Is my home like that all the time? No. My husband can vouch for that with certainty. I do not like to make the bed or wash the dishes right after breakfast/lunch/dinner, and if I have to take out the trash, it's like a journey to the great beyond.

But if I have guests coming over, the bed is fluffed and tight-cornered and the dishes will dance themselves into the cabinet all squeaky and sparkle-like and the trash? What trash? I don't have trash in my home. You trippin' girlfriend.

In my mind, it's not even a common courtesy to clean your house for guests, it's The Law. I don't mess around with the law because I don't have the time or money for a good lawyer since I'm so damn busy cleaning my bathrooms and making the bed. When I'm scrub-scrub-scrubbing, it's a solo effort. I don't want your help because you will do it wrong and leave water marks, so let me do it myself.

I know that this might seem crazy, but when I'm mopping the floor where my refridgerator just was because, yes, you bag of lazy bones, I moved that big ass thing to clean underneath it, I'm in the zone. That is my element. That is where I belong, and you better believe that I'm cleaning this place with my eyebrows drawn and my diamonds on because you have to look good to make good.

Maybe I'm succumbing to a sexist tradition against women, but I own it/live it/breathe it/love it because there is nothing better than smelling that lemony fresh scent of an immaculate household and watching your eyeballs bulge as you try to search for a speck of dust.

Because there ain't no dust in here. I killed it, and it went on the endangered species list, didn't you know?