| THE CLUTTER CULT
by Sue Fairhead
It's strange how we don't notice how good life is, until it gets worse.
How's that for a wise philosophical statement? Or is it just teenage angst?
Life trucked along nicely, just a few months ago. Oh, Mum and I had our
battles, but basically we got along fine. Dad died when I was small, so
we've always been close. I'm fourteen, starting my GCSE work at school.
Mum works in a bank. She's always said it's so clean and tidy there that
she needs a change of scene at home. So she didn't do a lot of cleaning
or cooking. She'd usually pick up something to eat on her way home –
a takeaway, or some instant meal to heat in the microwave. Then she'd
crash in front of the telly. I'd often join her, though the living room
seemed to make me sneeze.
Occasionally Mum would get some fad about tidiness, and I'd have to make
my bed and put dirty clothes in the laundry basket, and she would wash
the windows and pull out the vacuum cleaner. But mostly we got along in
our comfortable, untidy kind of way, a week at a time.
Then it all changed. I remember it vividly.
The bang of the front door roused me from my Saturday morning torpor.
I opened my eyes gingerly, rubbed them, yawned, and sat up. It was only
ten o'clock, but my stomach was growling. So I threw on some clothes,
and went downstairs to see what I could find for breakfast.
The kitchen, to my amazement, was spotless. No cereal bars lying around,
no bread on the counter top, no crumbs in sight. Even the taps were gleaming.
I opened the fridge. It looked regimented. All the cheese together. Yogurts
on the bottom shelf. I couldn't see any fruit and veg at all, then realised
they were in the vegetable drawer. They all looked fresh, too. No mouldy
tomatoes, no squashy courgettes. I wondered if I was in the middle of
a bizarrely realistic dream.
I took a yogurt, then opened a few cupboards until I found the cereal
bars. I put the kettle on and made some tea, then sat the kitchen table
– which was clean and shining – and ate. Where was Mum, I
wondered, and what was going on? I was about to call her mobile when the
back door opened, and she came in.
'Just hanging out the laundry,' she said cheerfully. 'Can you help me
in with some packages from the car?' I shrugged and followed her. She
had bought, among other things, a new vacuum cleaner, a slow-cooker, a
mop and bucket, and a lifetime's supply of cleaning products. Dusters,
cloths, spray polish, loo cleaner, kitchen spray… a whole box of
them.
'So… are you going to sell cleaning stuff on Ebay?' I asked.
She laughed. 'Nope,' she said. 'I've finally got fed up with all our clutter
and mess. So I'm going to be a Fly baby.'
'You what?'
She said she'd joined some American website called Flylady, which told
people how to de-clutter their homes and keep them clean, and cook good
food, and have organised lives. Apparently there are thousands of people
on this site, and they all call themselves 'Fly babies'. It sounded like
a weird religious cult to me.
'Baby flies? You mean, like, maggots?' I asked.
Mum wasn't impressed. Clearly she was taking this cult very seriously.
We carried the new stuff in, then she started to sort out one of our random
boxes of clutter. I discovered that a history essay was calling me urgently,
and left her to it. Another new fad, I thought. I gave it a fortnight
at most.
Two weeks passed, and the house continued to gleam. Mum got up earlier
each morning, then she rushed around doing bizarre things like swishing
the loo, and shining the sink. Then she put some nutritious casserole
in the slow-cooker for our evening meal.
By the end of the first week I was craving a Chinese takeaway, but Mum
said we were saving money by eating proper food, and it was much better
for us. She stopped buying fizzy drinks, too. It was a bit embarrassing.
I used to have one of my mates over after school sometimes, for a Coke
and crisps. Now all I could find was mineral water and sunflower seeds.
It got worse. Mum was sorting our clutter boxes out, one at a time, throwing
out some old junk, and putting away random bits and pieces she discovered.
But when she found anything of mine, she put it back in the empty box
and brought it to my room. So my already crowded bedroom, which had papers
and dirty clothes and empty crisp packets on the floor, also had a growing
stack of boxes. And Mum started hinting strongly that maybe I could do
something about them.
Mind you, I was getting more homework done, and sleeping better, which
Mum said was due to eating proper food. I even stopped sneezing when I
was in the living room.
Mum didn't have time for crashing out in front of the telly in the evenings
any more. She was too busy cleaning the kitchen and swooping around the
house finding random clutter and hot-spots, and then it took her at least
an hour to read all the Flylady emails every day. She said they were full
of wonderful testimonials to how people's lives became so much better
as a result of following routines and eating right, and all that.
After a month, Mum told me she'd now developed good routines, which take
thirty days to become habits. Then she started picking up the dirty clothes
from my floor, and I got really aggravated. I didn't want her turning
out my pockets, or deciding when I needed clean jeans. I LIKE the dust
that accumulates in my sweatshirts. And I certainly didn't want her rooting
around amongst my papers. It forced me to pick some of them up and empty
out my own pockets, and I felt manipulated.
I was moaning about it to my mate a few weeks ago. I told him about those
inspirational emails. I said, 'I bet they never reports from disgruntled
teenagers saying how their lives are ruined by all this healthy eating
and cleanliness stuff.'
'Teenagers aren't supposed to be clean and healthy,' he said. 'It's against
our religion.'
'Right. But what can I do?'
'Easy. Make up some testimonials from unhappy teenagers.'
'But she'd know they were from me… what good would that do?'
He rolled his eyes. 'Duh. Fake the headers. And make sure it looks like
the right kind of email.'
If my mate has a fault, it's that he's a bit over-geeky. I mean, computers
are great for games and chatting, and even research and making homework
look good. But he really likes them. He understands the cables and the
gigabytes and the pros and cons of different operating systems and browsers.
Still, sometimes, the geekiness comes in handy.
Evidently I looked clueless, because he sighed, in that annoying way he
has, and sat down at my computer. He found the Flylady site. Then he created
a new webmail account, and signed us up for her mailing list. It didn't
take long before something arrived… gushing welcome messages, and
a couple of cringeworthy testimonials.
'OK,' he said, 'This'll be fun'.
He wrote a long, complaining letter from an imaginary teenager in America,
signed it 'A flybaby's son in California', typed some stuff in the settings
to make it look as if it came from the Flylady mailing list, and addressed
it to my mother's email.
'There,' he said. 'I won't do more than one, or she might get suspicious.
But try two or three a week, and see what happens…'
It worked surprisingly well. The following morning, Mum asked me dubiously
if I was a bit fed up with the good food and clean house.
'Uh, well, since you mention it… I do kind of miss our old lifestyle,'
I said.
She frowned, then gave me a hug. 'Well,' she said, 'I must admit it's
a bit tiring. Shall we get a pizza tonight?'
The pizza came with a free two-litre bottle of Pepsi. 'I'd forgotten how
good junk food tastes!' said Mum. 'Shall we have takeaway once a week?
I could do with a break.'
I guess I should have quit while I was ahead. But the power went to my
head. I wrote a couple more Flylady testimonial emails that week. Mum
stopped collecting my dirty clothes, and hinting that I should sort out
my clutter. Then she stopped getting up so early, and started leaving
stuff around the kitchen again.
I found a trail of ants on the work surface yesterday morning. Yuck. The
loo isn't staying so clean, either. I'd forgotten how gross that can be.
And the laundry basket is overflowing.
Mum has started watching TV in the evenings again. She loads the dishwasher
after we eat, flicks a cloth around the kitchen, then sighs. 'Why bother?'
she mutters.
I've started sneezing again. My homework is suffering. I can't concentrate
so well, now I'm back to eating junk food most of the time. As I said,
we don't know how good life is, until it gets worse.
I'm still getting those Flylady emails, though. Maybe I should try getting
up early and cleaning the sink…
|
