Dirt - common denominator for us all?

With our brand-new, clean and good smelling car on one of its very first trips doing duty as the family-wagon, my husband suggested that maybe for this car we should have a "no eating in it" rule. This, fairly mild, suggestion upset me so much that when we got home I tore apart the sofa and vacuumed it and set to scrubbing small stains out of the slipcover.

I have some baggage, shall we say?

So I quite enjoyed reading Dirt: The Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House. This collection of essays brings all kinds of voices (male, female, single, divorced, married, parents, children, rich, poor, gay, straight, asian, black, and white) to the discussion of how and why we clean, or don't clean, our personal spaces. I was touched by the raw vulnerability so many of the writers displayed, and reassured that I am definitely not alone.

Perhaps this most mundane of issues - the toothpaste dried on the sink, the dirt tracked in on our shoes - is really the common denominator of our human lives. And the issue is connected with our family stories, our relationships, our power-struggles, our relative levels of privilege in life - it carries a lot of baggage with it.

Take a break from cleaning house, and read this book instead!