How much needless anxiety, care, and absolute torture some women suffer in an insane desire to keep their homes spotlessly clean. The house must be without a speck of dirt anywhere; the kitchen must be as spotless as the parlor; the sink must be so immaculate that you could eat from it, if necessary; the children must always be in their best bibs and tuckers and appear as Little Lord Fauntleroys; and no one, at any time, or any circumstance, must ever appear to be dirty, except the scavenger who comes to remove the accumulated debris of the kitchen, and the man who occasionally assists the gardener.
These people forget that all dirt and dust is not of greater value than spotless cleanliness. Let us look calmly at the problem for a few minutes. Here is a housewife who cannot afford help to keep her house as spotless as her instincts and her training desire. It is simply impossible for her, personally, to go over the house daily with rag, duster and dustpan. If she attempts it, as she does sometimes—she overworks, and a breakdown is the result. What, then, is the sensible, the reasonable, the only thing she should do? Sit down and "worry" over her "untidy house"; lament that "the stairs have not been swept since day before yesterday; that the parlor was not dusted this morning; the music-room looks simply awful," and cry that "if Mrs. Brown were to come in and see my wretchedly untidy house, I'm sure I should die of shame!" Would this help matters? Would one speck of dirt be removed as the result of the worry, the wailing, and the tears? Not a speck. Every particle would remain just as before.
Yet other things would not be as they were before. No woman could feel as I have suggested this "worriting creature" felt, without gendering irritation in husband, children and friends. Is any house that was ever built worth the alienation of dear ones? What is the dust, dirt, disorder, of a really untidy house—I am supposing an extraordinary case—compared with the irritation caused by a worrying housewife?
Furthermore: such a woman is almost sure to break down her own health and become an irritable neurasthenic or hypochondriac, and thus add to the burdens of those she loves.
There are women who, instead of following this course, make themselves wretched—and everyone else around them—by the worry of contrasting their lot with that of some one more fortunately situated than they. She has a husband who earns more money than does hers; such an one has a larger allowance and can afford more help—the worry, however, is the same, little matter what form it takes, and worry is the destructive thing.
What, then, shall a woman do, who has to face the fact that she cannot gratify her desire to keep her house immaculate, either because she has not the strength to do it, or the money to hire it done. The old proverb will help her: "What can't be cured must be endured." There is wonderful help in the calm, full, direct recognition of unpleasant facts. Look them squarely in the face. Don't dodge them, don't deny them. Know them, understand them, then defy them to destroy your happiness. If you can't dust your house daily, dust it thrice a week, or twice, or once, and determine that you will be happy in spite of the dust. The real comfort of the house need not thereby be impaired, as there is a vast difference between your scrupulous cleanliness and careless untidiness. Things may be in order even though the floor has a little extra dust on, or the furniture has not been dusted for four days.
"But," you say, "I am far less disturbed by the over work than I am by the discomfort that comes from the dust." Then all I can say is that you are wrongly balanced, according to my notion of things. Your health should be of far more value to you than your ideas of house tidiness, but you have reversed the importance of the two. Teach yourself the relative value of things. A hundred dollar bill is of greater value than one for five dollars, and the life of your baby more important than the value of the hundred dollar bill. Put first things first, and secondly, and tertiary, and quarternary things in their relative positions. Your health and self-poise should come first, the comfort and happiness of husband and family next, the more or less spotlessness and tidiness of the house afterwards. Then, if you cannot have your house as tidy as you wish, resolutely resolve that you will not be disturbed. You will control your own life and not allow a dusty room—be it never so dusty—to destroy your comfort and peace of mind, and that of your loved ones.
When a woman of this worrying type has children she soon learns that she must choose between the health and happiness of her children and the gratification of her own passionate desire for spotless cleanliness. This gratification, if permanently indulged in, soon becomes a disease, for surely only a diseased mind can value the spotlessness of a house more than the health, comfort, and happiness of children. Yet many women do—more's the pity. Such poor creatures should learn that there is a dirtiness that is far worse than dirt in a house—a dirtiness, a muddiness of mind, a cluttering of thought, a making of the mind a harboring place for wrong thoughts. Not wrong in the sense of immoral or wicked, as these words are generally used, but wrong in this sense, viz., that reason shows the folly, the inutility, the impracticability of attempting to bring up sane, healthy, happy, normal children in a household controlled by the idea that spotless cleanliness is the matter of prime importance to be observed. The discomfort of children, husband, mother herself are nothing as compared with keeping the house in perfect order. Any woman so obsessed should be sent for a short time to an insane asylum, for she certainly has so reversed the proper order of values as to be so far insane. She has "cluttered up" her mind with a wrong idea, an idea which dirties, muddies, soils her mind far worse than dust soils her house.
Reader, keep your mind free from such dirt—for dirt is but "matter in the wrong place." Far better have dust, dirt, in your house, dirt on your child's hands, face, and clothes, than on your own mind to give you worry, discomfort and disease.