Page 6 - Desert Oracle August 2020

Cleaning

What is all this uproar lately about cleaning this and cleaning that? It is almost laughable to me to hear
that so many cleaning supplies are suddenly in short supply in the stores these days. It begs me to ask
the question “Weren’t we always supposed to be keeping things clean?” Maybe I’m “old school”, but I
can clearly remember growing up with the notion of needing to wash my hands before dinner or when
handling food, etc.
My mother had 8 children and did all the house cleaning herself until she taught us children to do our
part. We were not permitted to go outside to play on Saturdays until our chores were done, which
included cleaning our rooms and any other room in the house that our mother deemed necessary. No
matter how many toys were scattered on the floor in the play room (which was technically the dining
room, but turned into our play room……we never dined in the “dining room”, only in the kitchen!), the
room was always clean, “lived in”, but clean (and, of course, we had to put the toys away in the toy box
before going to bed).

When you have 8 children, you definitely have to set rules to keep order. Us children played outside a
lot, and we rarely came home “clean”! We had a good, healthy, fun childhood, but we wouldn’t have
dreamt of just leaving our clothes on the floor. You either hung up your clothes or put them in the
hamper. When you finished in the bathroom after showering or taking a bath, you better clean up your
mess, as the next sibling is waiting outside to use the facilities. These are simple, basic common sense
courtesies that in the end make it easier for everyone.

It doesn’t take much to “keep things up”, to take good care of things so they last longer. However, if
you let things pile up; you can create a disaster and you might start to procrastinate as to getting things
done. I’m guessing this is what’s happened to a lot of people. Now because of the COVID 19 crisis,
these people are all of a sudden thinking they better get busy and clean!
Maybe the one good thing that will come out of the COVID 19 crisis, is that people will come to realize
that keeping things clean is a basic necessity to keeping healthy, and, isn’t that hard to do.

In the end, I have to say that I feel so lucky to have been raised by parents from “the Greatest
Generation”. They both worked so hard, didn’t have much in the way of material things, but they had
plenty of just plain good common sense.

Jackie Berkshire

Senior Secretary

PVA National Service Office