Dirty Drawers

This year I’ve taken to cleaning rentals for a living. (Does this girl know how to have fun or what?) Sadly, I’ve been doing more scrubbing than writing—a trend which must not continue. At least all that alone time affords an opportunity to ponder issues more intriguing than dust bunnies and soiled toilets.

On my first walk-through of a vacated rental, many units appear decent enough. Before I arrive, a maintenance crew has usually mucked out and repaired the place. They may have installed new flooring, replaced broken lighting fixtures, changed out burner pans on the stove. In some cases they’ve replaced a ruined appliance. (I love finding an already-clean oven or a pristine fridge!) And they’ve often applied a fresh coat of white paint.

Ready for a new renter, right?

Not so much. Closer inspection reveals cobwebs on the ceiling, fried bugs in light fixtures, crumbs in drawers, grimy cupboards, dusty window blinds, splattered refrigerators, encrusted ovens, sticky floors—and I needn’t describe what I find in most bathrooms.

Time to glove up and dive in. Before long the place looks worse than when I arrived. Cleaning supplies are scattered about; debris from drawers, cupboards, and window tracks has been brushed to the floor; the refrigerator and stovetop are dismantled; dust-laden light globes wait to be washed.

Then I look down at the stove and feel a tiny twinge of dread. Slowly, trepidatiously, I pull out the cavernous, dusty, hairy, unwieldy metal box suspended below the oven door. Those drawers give me the creeps (okay, not quite as bad as spidery, unfinished basements, but close).

What is it about those dirty drawers? For starters, I never know what I’ll discover when I open it. Petrified orts and dust are a given. Oven cleaner drips—probable. Will I see a grungy broiler pan in dire need of steel wool and elbow grease? Will there be rusty baking pans to discard? And when I wrestle that drawer free from the stove, what will I find underneath? Rodent droppings—or even, heaven forbid, a dead mouse? (Better than a live one, I’ll give you that.) Piles of cat hair embedded in layers of bacon drippings? Moldy chunks of bygone suppers amidst lost toys, papers, and tea bags? Whatever I uncover, I will be forced to address it. 

I brush crumbs from the drawer and set it in a corner to wait its turn. I go about my business, cleaning the fridge inside and out, wiping toxic goo from the oven, scouring cupboard doors free of greasy fingerprints. I scrub the outside of the stove, even lifting the stovetop to scrape away cooked-on spills under the burners. I pull appliances out of their nesting sites, sweep and mop the area around and under, then push them back in place. 

Still, that drawer waits, taunting me from the corner. I cannot declare the kitchen clean until I have dealt with that monster. I will not allow myself to change out of my soggy rubber gloves until I have made my peace with the drawer and set it back in place.

No more stalling. I cheer myself on (“You can do this . . . just get it over with”) and dip a used rag into my bucket of not-so-fresh soapy water. No point tainting clean rags or water on the first go-round. I spray degreaser on the stuck-on filth. The drawer has sharp corners and is awkward to handle, making it difficult to maneuver without scratching the floor, ripping a glove, or scraping myself. I rinse my rag, dip in suds again, and tackle the outside. Dust and cat hair cling to my rag and me. Rust crumbles to the floor and stains my rag. In time, every surface of this clumsy drawer has tasted soap and water. I finish it off with a clean wipe ’n’ dry, and slide it back into place beneath the oven door. One more stove drawer conquered. My shoulders relax a bit.

I realize my dirty drawer dread is somewhat irrational—procrastination often is. Many chores are more disgusting, exhausting, and time-consuming. But that drawer is the thing that elicits a visceral reaction.

It gets me thinking about the dirty drawers in my real life. Conflicts I avoid (if I put off that conversation long enough it might become irrelevant, right?), piles of paperwork that needed sorting months ago, a garage in desperate need of an overhaul. They may not be the biggest hurdles, but I tend to set them aside in the corner while I occupy myself with more comfortable tasks. 

Thankfully, tactics that work on the job also work at home. Facing down one dirty drawer after another, week after week, strengthens my get-it-done muscle. Three things that help . . . 

First, in most cases, the doing does not live up to the dread. (With one notable exception—plumbing repairs always go worse than they should. Dread is appropriate.) Once I complete a task, I often look back and think, That wasn’t so bad.  

Second, deadlines push us toward success. It’s good that I can’t move on from a kitchen until I’ve cleaned that drawer. At home, it’s amazing how the threat of company inspires me to clean bathrooms and mop floors. This blog post exists because I got tired of putting it off and set this weekend as my deadline.

Third, whether a job goes smoothly or not, the payoff is worth it. Of course, at work I’m motivated by a paycheck. No way would I clean one of those rentals for free. But money’s not the only reward. At the risk of sounding boring (I know, that train already left the station), I like to stand back and admire a kitchen that’s been transformed from slimy to shiny. I like knowing the room is clean, even in places nobody might look—such as the bottom of a stove drawer. I can take pride in having done my best. Isn’t that satisfaction one of the pure pleasures of life? 

Of course, the rewards are more meaningful and longer lasting when we complete a personal to-do. For example, keeping up a regular exercise routine (another of my dirty drawers) has begun to show results in the waistline as well as blood work numbers. And once I finish cleaning that garage, instead of trying not to look whenever I go out there, I will revel in the view. Won’t that be a thrill! (I told you I know how to have fun!) 

Next topic to ponder as I clean: How does cat hair end up in so many freezers? Hmmm. On second thought . . . I don’t want to know the answer to that one.

There's No Crying in Baseball?

Many weight-loss experts give this advice for choosing an exercise routine: “Find what you love and then do it!” I assume a lighted bulb is supposed to appear above my head, ding! Aha, so that’s how it’s done. Ohhh-kay. This week I’m going to start . . . uhhhhh . . . now what was that calorie-blasting activity that sounds like fun? Hmmm. Sorry, no flashing bulbs. No dinging bells.  

Problem is, I love sitting. Sitting and reading, sitting and watching TV, sitting and having coffee with friends or talking on the phone, sitting and doing puzzles, sitting and sewing, sitting and writing, sitting and cruising the Internet. Oh, I do like to stand sometimes—long enough to bake something yummy that I can then sit down and eat. When I’m in a feisty mood, I might sit outside. How time does fly when I’m sitting.

I’m not naturally inclined toward sweat-inducing activities. But I haven’t always been such a sitter. I recall a time—long, long ago, on a playground far, far away—when I did like exercise. It was called recess. My schoolmates and I would run and teeter-totter and jump rope and swing and climb monkey bars and play tag and four-square and hopscotch. We had fun.

Then one day everything changed. Recess disappeared. In its place we got P.E.—physical education, PhysEd, gym class. Whatever we called it, it held little resemblance to recess. Next thing we knew we were donning double-knit uniforms, picking teams to find out who was the most popular, and tallying sit-ups and pull-ups and rope climbs for a President’s Fitness Test award—which, by the way, I missed only because my softball throw was a few inches shy of the arbitrary distance requirement.

Recess had been a welcome break from the books; P.E. was a cruel intrusion of dodge ball attacks, reduced GPAs, and scarring rejection. And dare we fail to mention every chubby girl’s nemesis, tumbling? Oh, the humiliating memories!

During sixth grade, my P.E. teacher heard two of my friends and me grouse about how much we hated gym class. She said, “Well, if it makes you so miserable why don’t you just go to the library instead?” Hey, nobody needed to suggest that twice! The next time we were on our way to P.E., the three of us turned right instead of left and high-tailed it to the library—our home planet! Three happier eleven-year-old girls you could not find that day.

I don’t think the teacher even missed us the first few times. We definitely did not miss her! After a wonderful week of P.E.-free bliss, the librarian presented us with math worksheets to complete during our stay in the library. I guess we were supposed to view that as punishment. But we were all good students who would happily do extra brain work any day of the week if it got us out of P.E. When that didn’t dissuade us, our teacher got one of the other sixth grade teachers to bring us into her classroom to do our extra work under her beak-nosed supervision. Still, not a problem.

Eventually, our teacher gave up trying to be clever and just told us we had to come back to gym—which of course we did. But that short reprieve is still one of my favorite memories of P.E.     

I’m pretty sure P.E. was intended to instill in children a lifelong love of sports and exercise. Sadly, I suspect some of us came away instead with a lifelong distaste for anything that smacks of gym class. A softball game breaks out at a church picnic? Count me out. I had my fill of teammates upset with me for dropping a ball. Just going to the gym can conjure feelings of defiant inferiority toward naturally thin exercise enthusiasts.

It may take the rest of my life to exorcise the P.E.-conditioned insecurities that swirl around all things athletic. I hope someday I can recapture the simple joys of recess. To once again view exercise as a refreshing respite from the stuffy, stressful classroom of life.

For now, the best advice for me should probably be “Find what you don’t hate and do it.”

Broken Thanks

A number of years ago I acquired this cute little Thanksgiving knickknack. It looked great on the hall table, next to a rustic flower arrangement or a spice-scented candle. A perfect touch of autumn décor!

One day, in an all-too-common klutzy moment, I bumped into my pretty plaque. It fell to the floor, and the top portion broke off. When I picked it up and assessed the damage, its message read like a sick joke. Give thanks for my clumsiness? Be thankful that I just broke something I enjoy? Say thank you as I clean up a mess? Give thanks as I relegate a treasure to the trash?

Actually . . . yes, kind of. I’ve always been intrigued by a brief, concise command in the Bible: “In everything give thanks” (1 Thess. 5:16). Four simple words. A nice sentiment. Impossible to do though, right? Well, maybe my broken little sign could serve as a simple object lesson.

I decided to glue the plaque back together as best I could. You can see the iffy results of my repair job. It’s not pretty. But what could be more appropriate than a broken reminder to “Give Thanks”? Every year, when I display this damaged little decoration, I’m reminded that thanksgiving has little to do with perfection or beauty.   

If we hold out for ideal situations, dreamy relationships, fattened bank accounts, healthy bodies, or good moods before we give thanks, we will likely become blinded by discontent. We won’t be able to see anything but the cracks and missing chunks of our lives. No matter how good things are, we’ll always find a “but” to dampen our gratitude.

However, when we learn to give thanks in (not necessarily for) everything, our vision improves. We become better and better at spotting the positives, the consolations, the blessings God bestows in the midst of trouble.        

This month is a great time to exercise our thanks muscles. It will help inoculate us from the virus of whining that seems to be sickening our society of late.

“The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world” (Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts).

Happy Broken Thanksgiving!

Losing it on "Loser"

The time has come for me to spout off about my love-hate relationship with the TV show Biggest Loser. Over and over I decide not to watch any more because I hate the trainers’ domineering behavior, the contestants’ subservience, and the misinformation the show disseminates (see the list I link at the end of this post), but then I cave and tune in again, in order to follow the contestants as they shrink and get healthier (which can be inspiring at times).  

I could talk about this week’s episode (10/25) and how the ridiculous weight-loss expectations set up contestants for “failure” (and reinforced the message that losing two or three or five pounds in one week—or even gaining a few back—is failing!) but it was last week’s episode of BL (10/18) that got me thinking about writing this blog.

That episode opens with one contestant, Sunny, winning a trip home to see her family for a week. Naturally, she’s ecstatic at the opportunity to spend time with loved ones she’s been missing for a month. She jumps around and squeals—as the other contestants applaud her good fortune. Sunny’s joy even overrides the “twist” included in her prize [There always is one]: Her weight loss for that week will represent her entire team, meaning that if she does not lose a higher percentage than the average weight loss of at least one other team, a member of her own team will be eliminated.

Not to worry—Sunny will live to regret her rejoicing. Her trainer, Bob (who’s in a snit because Sunny’s prize also dictates he must accompany her to Texas to train her one-on-one), takes her to task in front of everyone: “Hey, Sunny,” he says, “This is going to be work. This is not going to be fun! You’re not going to have any f****** fun. . . . If I have anything to do with it, [you’re] not going to see anybody but me the whole time.” [Message to viewer: Working out is not, should not, cannot be fun, and weight loss success happens only in misery and isolation.] Bob glares at Sunny’s stunned expression. “You think I’m kidding?” [Actually, yes—we all know you’re exaggerating for obnoxious dramatic effect.]

So Sunny squares her shoulders, looks Bob dead in the eye, and says, “How dare you try to make me feel guilty for looking forward to seeing my family! I’m happy I won this prize, and I’m going to enjoy it—in spite of the fact that I have to let you come along.”

Oops. My mistake. For a minute there I imagined I was watching someone respond normally in a real-life situation. But this is not real life; this is reality TV. And all I can figure out is these contestants must sign a “will not talk back or stand up for myself” clause in order to compete for the $250,000 prize.

How does Sunny react to Bob’s tongue lashing? To her credit, she at least expresses some dismay at Bob’s threat to ruin her hometown visit. Other than that, though, all we see is her kowtowing to Bob’s scolding, apologetically uttering, “No, Bob, no fun” and “No, Bob, it’s not a vacation.” Later, she talks to the camera, promising to prove herself to Bob. [Because she’d better please that overbearing trainer—or else!]

I’ll admit, at this point, I got so disgusted that I quit watching. But that disturbing dynamic niggled at me so much I decided to write about it, and I went back later and viewed the episode in its entirety.

This episode also treats us to some workout scenes with Bob and Sunny in Texas. Bob seems to take pleasure in taunting a sweaty, exhausted, nauseated Sunny for celebrating when she won her prize, intimating that her torture sessions/workouts are his way of punishing her for her foolish excitement.

   

Meanwhile, back at the BL ranch, we see contestant Vinnie joshing around with his teammates about his belly, which he has nicknamed Cecil. He squishes his belly button up and down as if it’s a mouth and quips, “I’m trying to get off Vinnie because I’m killing him . . . slowly.” The group laughs. [It occurs to me that amidst all the yelling, cussing out, grunting, panting, and crying, one sound we don’t often hear on BL is laughter. I enjoyed the humor break.]

But evidently funny and thin are not compatible. Vinnie’s trainer, Dolvett Quince, talks to the camera about his disdain for such hijinks. “People with cancer don’t name their tumors.” [Ya wanna bet, Mr. DQ?] “This is a thing that’s literally killing you. This is a life and death situation. . . . I think my team has been guilty of being a little too playful leading up to this point.” Later, in the gym, when a couple of his contestants giggle at a funny comment while they exercise [Note, they did not stop working], Dolvett watches in disgust, then reams them out: “What the f*** is so funny? Why are we laughing over here? . . . I am sick and tired of the giggling, the laughing, the not taking things serious!”

Of course that leads to a treadmill-side therapy session—which, as usual, consists of the trainer lecturing the contestant about some unacceptable attitude, and the contestant showing submissive contrition. Vinnie eventually—kind of—defends himself. The trainer is happy to see the “angry Vinnie” and hopes there will be “no more jokes.” [Since we all know anger is better for your health than humor. Huh?]   

To quote Bonnie, another contestant, who’s having issues with her trainer, Anna: “I have no hints on how to be a trainer, but I do have hints on how to treat people.” [You go, Bonnie!]

I don’t have hints on being a trainer, either, and obviously this drill-sergeant approach works for some people. One thing I do know: No matter how much weight I needed to lose, I would never try the BL solution—for many reasons, the top one being I might end up in trouble for assaulting a trainer. Not worth it!

I’ve often wondered how other trainers view the BL portrayal of exercise, personal training, and weight loss. This list I found on a trainer’s website, entitled Top 10 Fitness TV Falsehoods , proved interesting and insightful—you may appreciate it too.