the spotless mind

I've never really been a big fan of cleaning. Tidying and sorting are more my style... I think that having grown up in a house where I've never been the messiest or dirtiest has instilled this sort of '100% good enough' attitude towards cleanliness ever since.

Dust never used to bother me until I heard somewhere that a vast percentage of it in households was actually from dead skin cells, but even then I only dusted my shelves every so often. I used to be a little squeamish about mould on dishes that had been left festering too long, or noticing smells in the kitchen that were organic yet not quite identifiable. Living with guys for most of my life had me in the position where I'd usually be the first person to get annoyed by the grottiness of something, but I must admit that I probably now have a greater tolerance for filth as a result.

Work is about to have an audit of sorts; something called a QSCD. I have no idea what the initials stand for, but in my head it's Quick, Someone Clean that Door. It's basically the most anally retentive inspection of the whole restaurant, done quarterly to make sure that certain standards of health and safety practice are maintained. The General Manager said to me that seeing as I'm headed for the RAAF, I'd probably dig the whole getting ready for QSCD thing, which is about as insane as implying any normal human being derives actual pleasure from establishing and maintaining military levels of cleanliness.

I had a moment of clarity while I was cleaning the toilets at the end of the shift tonight, after reading the incredibly detailed checklist of things to wipe and what chemicals to use where. I tried to think in terms of military clean, and wiped anywhere that I thought I'd inspect if I were employed to scrutinise things QSCD style. I think I actually covered most of the checkpoints that were on the list without having read it first, which I was vaguely impressed by, seeing as I'm sure some of the things I wiped tonight have not been seen to by a cloth since we opened a month ago. The restaurant wasn't completely new then either, so the mind boggles as to how long certain spots have needed the loving of Sparkle, my multi-purpose cleaning friend.

Maybe it was the scent of Sparkle in the air, or the realisation that I wasn't getting paid well enough to detail clean the toilets, but this voice in the back of my head, or perhaps the bottom of my heart, hinted that perhaps this isn't my calling. That it could be possible that I'm just not cut out for scrubbing toilet bowls and attempting to buff brushed metal until it shines, only to be tainted by the next greasy cook's paws on the way through to the changeroom. It seemed so futile, going to all this effort to wipe the pedals on the bins, when they would just get dirty again.

Then, after casually repositioning the bins in their respective corners, I stood up slowly in front of the mirror and a flash of halogen downlight bounced from the tops of the bins and glinted in my eye. I blinked and looked at myself, a clean reflection at five different angles, and knew that it didn't matter how dirty anything was going to get eventually. What mattered was that I knew, in that moment, that everything was as pristine as it could be.