Throwing Off the Yoke of PWE

I did the unthinkable.

I hired a cleaning service.

They were here for hours and looked exhausted when they left.

So, I’ve resisted this for years. There was a series of little wars in my head between the ever-dominant Protestant Work Ethic and the notion that age should bring me comforts. The Protestant Work Ethic or PWE for the jiffy-minded says that able-bodied people take care of their own business. Do their own wash, scrub their own floors, mow their own lawns. In the hairshirt world of PWE, we, each of us, just need to do what needs to get done, all of it, all the time.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to consider the notion that age should bring me comforts. I see friends on Facebook posting from Crete and Australia, another jetting off to Paris for a bit to ‘collect herself,’ and I think what the heck, Jan? You go camping with two dogs and drink coffee out of a plastic cup and think it’s the Ritz if the campground showers have hot water and a lock on the door. You get to have some comforts.

I am a terrible cleaner. I’m good at straightening and vacuuming and doing the dishes, but I don’t clean where I can’t see and, with increasing age, I’ve developed an almost unhealthy tolerance for dirt, almost considering it part of our lifestyle with two sled dogs and all the time we spend outdoors. There are also, sometimes, detour wars in my head that have to do with the division of labor in my household, but that’s another topic altogether.

So the cleaning service ended up spending twice as much time here as they estimated. The house is astonishingly clean. You could do surgery in my bathroom. And you know what else? I’ve stuck up for the comforts of age and defeated the Protestant Work Ethic that’s been draped over my shoulders like a lead vest forever.

I still mow the lawn though.