Dirty American

Dirty is always relative; it depends on your system. My family, for example, thinks I am ridiculous in maintaining one sponge for the dishes and another for the counter. I, in turn, and despite not having read any hygiene news in my support, find it equally ridiculous to put counter dirt near my dishes like that. But still I eat at their houses.

Our upstairs neighbor, on the other hand, though perhaps it is more appropriate to say on the other planet (or maybe just country), has her own special set of cleaning standards which she has irritatingly chosen not to keep to her idiosyncratic self. She has, apparently, been complaining to the building manager about our (my) inept cleaning of the laundry room for a while now. I was quite surprised to finally hear this this week, having been schooled on the finer details of cleaning the laundry room once soon after moving in, and having never really recovered from the blow to my pride that this represented, and thus having kept rather tidy ever since

The rules that this woman thinks I should keep made make my eyeballs ache. The dials must be turned in the same direction (up). The lint trap must be washed out. The soap drawer must be cleaned, of course, but should be taken out entirely and washed thoroughly. Inside should be checked for drips. (Apparently she puts her face up to the hole to check for fabric softener residue.) The rubber part on the dryer door must be inspected for lint. And these are in addition to the already crazy house rules. All doors and drawers should be cleaned thoroughly and left open, but only slightly. The floors around the machines should be mopped. The sink and the top of the machines should be polished. Oh, and our assigned laundry period is Wednesday afternoon. No other laundering without special permission.