Love At First Wipe
The Age
Thursday October 2, 2003
I learned how to clean by being "allowed" to polish the silver and by my mother's show-ring inspection of our horse tack. Only the devil would ride with dry reins and a dirty saddle. At boarding school, migrant women laundered, cleaned and cooked for us, alongside a sub-species of the reigning religious order, "lay sisters", whose tea-leaf-rubbed linoleum corridors and sumptuously polished stairs were a monument to their art. They had sweet natural faces and wore robes of rougher material than the teaching "mothers". We girls were not allowed to speak to them. Vatican II's egalitarianism sent those stairs straight to rack and ruin.
I don't like cleaning windows. If I ever get rich, I'll hire a window cleaner first thing. There's one house around the corner - I tell you, she should get a prize for the cleanest windows in Springvale. Diamonds! Filthy Rick was the best cleaner: he'd obsess over an old tap or saucepan for just as long as it took, and create a jewel, every time.
Cleanliness is in the eye of the beholder, as communal living so painfully demonstrates. When my son was old enough to want money, I paid him to clean the toilet floor every week - one of the best investments I ever made. I may have pushed him a little far last week though, with the Joan party I held in his Fitzroy warehouse. Nicole introduced me to Joan at her house and it was love at first wipe.
"Joan" (no product-placements here) was the brainchild of a 22-year-old, unemployed Austrian man whose scientist father suggested doing something with a fibre he'd invented. Joan now comes to us as a range of tough dirt, dust and grease-inhaling little mitts, sold only through parties and thrillingly expensive. In May this year, Melbourne's Joan team sold a record million dollars of product. The Big Joan, named in recent richest lists, has just cornered the United States franchise. Go Joan!
We got Myrtle Weybury, Joan seller for seven years and making a very good living while raising four children. At Joan University, we learn that, from now on, we will clean only with Joan, cold water and an occasional dab of marble paste. We may purchase dishwashing and laundry detergent, but never fabric softener, which is evil.
The kid's friends were a bit stunned and giggled when she mentioned skirting boards and toothbrushes - as if! Myrtle wasn't fussed. But hey, it wasn't smoked glass in the shower screen! And "Wow! That mark was there when I moved in!" Respect! Of course they couldn't afford it. I can't believe how much money I spent. But Joan and I have been hand in hand ever since.
Run your fingers across the silky feel of the steel sink! Behold the toilet, whiter than a blessing! Joan's little fibres tickled crevices I never knew it had. Egad! I sleep easier at night knowing that confidence is not a fragranced purple flush.
© 2003 The Age
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