House Cleaning and Dust Bunnies

(This post was originally published in two parts at the blog, Grass People. Read both parts at http://aworldofgrasspeople.blogspot.com/2016/10/house-cleaning-and-dust-bunnies-pt-1.html and http://aworldofgrasspeople.blogspot.com/2016/10/house-cleaning-and-dust-bunnies-pt-2.html.)

I would say that, by most standards, I am not one to be easily grossed out. Like, for instance, one of my friends puked all over the floor once when she had the stomach flu, and I just cleaned it up. No big deal. No dry heaving. It’s all good. A dog pooped on the rug in my room another time, and that was gross and kind of irritating. But hey. At least I didn’t step in it. Spiders? No big deal. I actually even have a “no killing spiders policy” that applies as long as the spider is not near my bed, by a couch that I like to sit on, or in my food. Other than that, in general I’d say, “Live and let live.” Washing dirty dishes is fun, cleaning toilets is satisfying, taking the trash out is okay as long as I hold my breath. The main things that I just can’t handle are dead animals, mice, swarms of ants… and one more thing that I discovered this summer.

I really love bunnies. There’s pretty much only one big rule that I actually established in my household as the youngest child, and that rule is that you have to say something if you see a bunny rabbit in the yard. Seeing a bunny is simply not something to keep to yourself. My brother, thankfully, now knows the importance of this rule. He may not quite understand it yet, but at least, after 20-plus years of being my older brother, he gets that it’s a big deal to me.

There’s one breed of bunny that I just didn’t know much about, though, until this summer. When I discovered it, I was horrified. It joined my short list of disgusting things that I can’t handle. I remember first reading about this breed in a comic strip and asking my mom what it was. She explained it. Ever since then, though, I guess I always assumed it was extinct. At least, it was extinct in my neck of the woods, thanks to a disciplined mother who was always exterminating them in our house.

Before you imagine my sweet mother to be a horrible bunny-killer, I suppose I should explain to you that this breed of bunny that I am talking about is the dust bunny. And, man, did my South Dakota apartment have lots of those hopping around.

When my mom and I first moved my stuff into the little apartment over the bar, we did a preliminary dusting, and mom cleaned the bathroom. Before she left, she encouraged me to find a vacuum within the next couple of weeks to take care of the dirty carpets. It kind of slipped my mind. That is, until a few weeks later, when I realized that I was constantly sneezing and that my throat was often really itchy. So I decided to begin my hunt for the vacuum in earnest, believing that perhaps a good clean-up would be the way to eliminate my allergies.

Wow, I could not have been more right. Once I finally found the vacuum in the closet in the hallway, I commenced what would become a nearly two hour cleaning session. I moved every article of furniture in the living room and bedroom (using my incredible muscles, of course) and vacuumed every square inch of carpet that I could. And, oh, the horrors I discovered under those pieces of furniture and in the crevices of that disgusting television stand! The dust! Oh, the dust! While dusting that horrible television stand, I ran a rag across it at least three times, and each time the cloth came away covered in more of that ugly dusty dirt.

“Whatever, it’s just dirt,” you might say. But no. Let’s be realistic here. It’s not “just dirt.” “Just dirt” is that glorious, wonderful outside dirt that you used to make pies out of and that some of you even used to eat.

This dirt that I was dealing with in that apartment was nothing so wonderful or natural or good-smelling or refreshing. This dirt was inside dirt. Dirt that has never breathed fresh air or even seen the light of the sun. It’s straight up dust. Dust bunnies in excess. Who knows how much dead human skin was in that stuff. Yuck. Maybe it’s just because I have a specific allergy to dust and dust mites, but, while I was picking that stuff up with my rag, all I could think about was all of the invisible organisms in it that I couldn’t see that were probably slowly killing me from the inside because I had breathed them all in over the past month. (AHH!)

And then there were the carpets. I vacuumed in every room that had carpets, even the bathroom because, yes, the bathroom was carpeted. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so simultaneously satisfied and grossed out as I did while vacuuming those carpets. The carpets literally got several shades darker each time I ran the vacuum over them because of all of the dust that was being extracted.

And, man, did that vacuum suck up a lot of junk. When I moved the furniture, it was like I had unearthed a Martian’s museum of human artifacts. To name a few of the highlights, I found a peanut, an M&M, a receipt, a barrette, an empty fruit snack bag, a couple bottle caps, and twenty-seven cents. The stuff too big to get with the vacuum, I had to touch with my fingers. When I picked up the change, the quarter and pennies left little circles in the dust of the carpet. Eww.

The main thing on my mind through all of this was the fact that I had been sitting over all of this disgusting, dusty junk for over a month. Wow. Just wow. That just brings a whole new level of meaning to that verse about the Pharisees whom Jesus compares with whitewashed tombs and an unwashed cup. My apartment may have looked fine at a glance, but it was actually just one big dust bunny trap. I think I get it now.

Newsflash. This apartment is usually rented out to hunters. I don’t know how I feel about hunters anymore. I guess they only stay a couple days at a time, so they probably don’t have the time to clean. Maybe I should be questioning how I feel about my landlord, then. But I won’t because I’m just glad he let me stay here. Really, though. I would not be surprised if I were the first person to give this room a good cleaning in (I don’t want to know how many) years. There was so much dirt in that apartment before that cleaning session that I might as well have been camping for that first month.

But, what can I say. I’m my mother’s daughter. I had a fun time housecleaning that day.