Clean Enough for an Irish Housewife

 I woke up this morning and cleaned my entire apartment, top to bottom. I wiped everything down, cleaned the windowsills and baseboards. I scrubbed the bathtub and toilet. I dusted, swept, vacuumed, and mopped. It all took me about an hour and a half to accomplish. I wasn't in any hurry.  And when I had finished, I heard my mother speaking in my head saying, "It's clean enough for an Irish housewife, I suppose." 

It wasn't a compliment. My mother used to say it after we'd all finished our chores. And what she meant by it was that it was clean, but you could still tell that someone actually lived in the house we had just cleaned. Then she'd go back through and by some trick I could never figure out, turn the space we'd just cleaned into a room that was good enough to be in a museum. Why she thought that a house inhabited by six children should ever look as if nobody lived there is well beyond me. 

I heard my aunts and grandmother use the same term, so I think it must have come from my great-grandmother, and who knows who before her. The cultural derision is still apparent, though no one in my family is ashamed of having Irish descent. It was just a term that was used.

I looked around after my imagined critique from my dear departed mother and decided that clean enough for an Irish housewife was plenty good enough for me today. The king isn't coming to tea, after all. I don't need my home to look as if nobody lives here to be comfortable in it. I enjoy clean. But clean enough is enough.