Photoshop Alone Won’t Keep Your House Clean

Two years ago a local shelter magazine did a photo spread of our small downtown Detroit townhouse. I’ve always had a complicated relationship with these sorts of magazines, enjoying them for the inspiration they can provide, but also sort of loathing them for the projection of that impossible-to-attain image: the perfectly arranged, perfectly clean house. And then there we were, taunting anyone who would see the spread with that same lie.

For weeks leading up to the photo shoot, we ripped down the ugly wallpaper inherited from a previous occupant, repainted walls, rearranged tsotchkes, and went out and bought more fresh-cut flowers than we’d ever had in our house. In the days before the photographers’ arrival, we also cleaned like nobody’s business. Remember Tetris, how when you’d fit a row of boxes together perfectly, they’d disappear? If only that were true for all the boxes we crammed into our closets before the photo shoot. When we were done cleaning, the house looked great, but we couldn’t find anything we actually needed. Sure, the depression-era hobo-carved figurine looked great next to the Jonathan Adler vase, but where was the cell phone charger? It was nice to actually see what our dining room table looked like, but where could I put my laptop? Shelter magazines only show rooms. They do not show rooms as actually inhabited by human beings.

When it comes to cleanliness, I do try to run a pretty tight ship. I’m a stay-at-home dad, and sometimes I feel I have to justify the lack of money I’m bringing home by keeping that home as clean as possible. But as clean as I try to keep things, the townhouse has never been as clean as it was for that photo shoot. There are always streaks on the dishwasher, a dirty wall where the dog shook himself off after a rainy walk, and toys, crayons, and sippy cups everywhere.  Often, I’ll think I have the house clean, but a friend or neighbor will stop over and suddenly I’ll notice a newly cracked molding or dozens of dust bunnies under the coffee table before they’ve even sat down. Absent a set of fresh eyes, sometimes you just get used to how you live. And there’s nothing like the pressure of fresh eyes to inspire you to get some real cleaning done, especially when those fresh eyes will number in the thousands.

When the magazine was finally published, my wife was on the cover. Strangely, I was in the photo they chose for the cover, but they’d photoshopped me out of the picture completely (rather than taking offense, I called everyone I knew to them I was married to a cover girl). Later, when we looked carefully at the photos we noticed there were other things missing: the cord to the television, the hideous-but-beloved Tiffany lamp in our daughter’s room, those last uncaptured dog hairs. Looking at these photos, we could hardly believe it was our own home.  We showed the photos to our daughter. “So clean!” she said. “But where’s all my stuff?”

We learned from the experience that the houses you see in magazines aren’t at all like the homes inhabited by their owners; you can’t photoshop out the flaws of every day life: the carpet stains, the toothpaste around the rim of the sink, the oafish stay-at-home husband. Sometimes the best you can do is pick up after your kids, scrub a little here and there, and hope that whenever sometimes stops by your home unexpectedly that they won’t notice everything you never got around to cleaning because you were just too busy living there.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Indoor Cleaning, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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