To Clean or Not To Clean?
I just came across this insightful article from Naomi Hudson. It really impels readers to stop and reflect on the basic task of toilet cleaning. Hudson marvels at the time one of her roommates shared their pride from first-time toilet cleaning. Oh, the questions this raised! Are there actually people in the world who have never cleaned a toilet? Is toilet cleaning associated with economic class or gender? Certainly, this is a whole unlimited horizon for research, analysis, pondering, and debate. What is cleanliness all about, really? And how much of it starts with cleaning the toilet?
For me, toilet cleaning was a household chore assigned in early grade-school years. My siblings and I were all taught this essential task and took turns regardless of gender or age. Right away, I was drawn in by chore’s simplicity. You squirt this bottle of toilet cleaner around the bowl, then scrub up, down, and all around with a multi-purpose toilet brush. At age 8 or 9, I was so amazed at how the porcelain shined after process completion. As an adult, I still am equally amazed. Additionally, when you are an adult with full-time work, financial obligations, and responsibilities in family and society, small tasks like cleaning the toilet also bring an extra sense of pride and accomplishment. And let’s face it, isn’t toilet cleaning an ideal application of the serenity prayer?
Grant me the serenity to accept the waste matter I cannot avoid in work or relationships, yet also provide me the courage to clean the waste matter depository within my own dwellings.
Change focus to this piece where writer SG Buckley brilliantly highlights main points from an academic journal article scrutinizing the phenomenological differences between men and women related to house cleaning. Cambridge University philosophy professors took time away from pondering forever elusive topics like consciousness, insuperable ethical problems, or ever-baffling metaphysical questions to speculate as to reasons why women may be more inclined to complete domestic chores like wiping off counters or cleaning toilets. Their main conclusion seems to be something to the tune of “a mess is not a mess until it is perceived as such.” Men generally would look at a buildup of waste matter in the porcelain bowl as a naturally occuring phenomenon like moss growing on trees while women would generally view it as a potentially harmful mess needing to be cleaned right away. Both perceptions would be strongly correlated to social conditioning.
Kudos to the Cambridge professors for reminding us that there is the endlessly mysterious dimension to even the most mundane of things. But their brilliant reflection and speculaton is hardly scraping the surface. Certainly, there are plenty of phenomena men generally perceive as messes more often than women — like oil smudges on tools or some common substance building up in an engine. Also, how many other factors are there to consider when talking about cleanliness and perceptions of messiness? In addition to social factors, what about cultural, historical, geographical, psychological, or even spiritual?
Common examples tell us how much location, domain, and context influence our perceptions of messes and desires to clean. In public places, cleaning the toilet is usually the custodian’s job — even if we are the main messmakers (I will be the first to admit I have been the culprit who has plugged up the public toilet and quietly snuck out of the bathroom). But in our own place of residence(or our workplace or the home of our loved ones), cleaning up after ourselves is key. You value your own sacred dwelling space and take pride in its order and cleanliness. The same for your closest fellow humans — honoring their sacred dwelling space by placing highest regard on cleanliness. Paradoxically, there are quite a few striking things when considering messes and chaos in the outdoors and Nature. You do not think to even look down the hole of a public outhouse — it’s where all of the waste matter goes. When out in the great outdoors and wilderness, when you do your business in a hole or latrine and then bury when done the whole event almost takes on a communal and even spiritual component. Waste matter from humans is no different from the waste matter of bears, birds, bats, or mice. All the waste will go back to Nature. And Nature will do the cleaning, plus recycle wastes back to riches.
