Warning: View With Caution

Warning: The following entry contains graphic details that may offend people who actually clean their houses on a regular basis.

Today I cleaned the refrigerator. That isn't a big deal for some people. For me it took everything I have learned in Psycho Cybernetics and Cognitive Therapy to even begin the project. Of course people who clean out their refrigerators regularly don't face the task I did. It isn't like there was rotting food. At our house we are all such good eaters that we don't have leftovers to put into the fridge in the first place. It is all about the accidental spills that occur on a fairly regular basis. The worst was the thick chocolate topping that had pooled and solidified on the top glass shelf. There was strawberry jam that had done the same on the side walls. Somehow pickle juice is always part of the mix and there is always that special discovery of what exactly has made its way to the very bottom of the refrigerator and taken up residence under the lowest drawer!

To complicate matters, the faucet of the kitchen sink started sending out violent sprays of water from its base as I finished the dishes this morning, so I was thwarted from engaging in my usual routine of soaking the kitchen counters and floor as I cart parts of the refrigerator shelving back and forth from a thorough washing at the sink. So I did what I do best...drag items to the bathtub and climb in! In the process I discovered that while the hauling back and forth felt a little like the early frontier settlers carrying their used dishes to the river, I actually made much smaller of a mess, and had much more contained water by using the bathtub method. And since you don't know my early marriage story about the showerbath in our tiny apartment I will take the opportunity to digress...

Tracy and I started our marriage living in "The Canal District" of San Rafael, California. It was the lowest rent, highest crime, and most ethnically diverse area in the County. And it was the place that we could financially afford. I forgot to mention that when we were first married we lived in the basement of my parents house in now-million dollar homes Larkspur, California. My parents, who had lived in that home for 25 years moved after having us as tenants for one year! So Canal District it was. Our apartment was tiny and the only door into it was a sliding glass door. You know how people check out of the peep hole of a door to see who is ringing the bell? Imagine your whole wall being glass!!

The three memories that are the most strong for me from that apartment are the night that the drunk man kept banging on our glass door, certain that our apartment was his; the weekly meetings held in our Hindu neighbors' apartment where so many people filed in that we couldn't imagine where they all sat; and the refrigerator sized speakers that our downstairs Haitian neighbor used for his music that used to shake everything in our apartment with its pulse! But for this story I will tell you what I did when Tracy called one afternoon to announce that his boss was coming for dinner. Having no time to spare, I rushed to a nearby restaurant for take-out, came home and put all that food in my own dishes, fried up onions and garlic for a fabulous smell and took the dirty dishes out of our sink and off of our spacious 2 square foot kitchen counter, deposited them all into the bathtub, and pulled the shower curtain closed! We had a lovely evening and the next morning the shower seemed like a brilliant way to get a bunch of dishes done at once! Lucky for me, the boss hadn't seen a need to peek behind the curtain.

Back to today's refrigerator cleaning...once my fridge was all fresh white plastic and squeaky clean glass I had the traditional compulsive desire to organize the food back into shelves and drawers resembling a grocery store. All the jars and containers are wiped clean, all the labels face front, and so on goes the craziness. As my kids came home, I proudly showed them what my hours of worked had achieved and showed them which still-dirty refrigerator door shelf I had saved for them to bathe with! As I returned to the sparkling refrigerator over and over again to open the door and appreciate the beauty I realized why I will never keep the perfect fridge for very long. If my refrigerator looked perfect all the time it would become one of those things I no longer appreciate. People who clean their refrigerator regularly get no "Wow!" from their kids opening the fridge door for the big reveal!

And then there is the fear factor. Matt confessed to me that the large chocolate spill had encouraged him to go for the quick-dive approach to food retrieval. Having relaxed his psyche, I feel particularly successful as a mother.

Who knows what I will have the privilege of scraping off of my refrigerator shelves in my upcoming adventures? What child will be psychologically burdened next by the dilemma of a strong desire to eat versus the trauma of opening the refrigerator door? And why won't my children return items to the shelves with the label showing?

Tune in next time for more confessions of the desperate housewife!
(Wanna come see my clean fridge? Admission is free. Messing with labels is strictly forbidden!)