The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs by Christina Hopkinson Page B

now. Let’s make them on the toss of a domestic coin; say, whether he’s put the cereal away.
    I come back to find the kitchen clean, ish. It’s not to my standards, he never wipes surfaces, but the breakfast things have been put away and a path burrowed through the felt-tips and Play-Doh tubs scattered across the floor.
6. Is good at doing the occasional manic tidy. He argues that he does just as much tidying as me, which isn’t true anyway, but even if it were, it doesn’t take into account that I’m much better at avoiding creating a need for tidying up—the washing of pans as I go along, the feed-wipe routines, the one toy in, one toy out policy. But when he does tidy, I admit, he does so with some efficiency. Until he finds something, a newspaper or an old toy, that sets him off on some reverie. It doesn’t matter if something is left half tidied, you see, because someone will be along later to finish the job. The transparent cleaner-mother-wife person who Rufus looked at so oddly when she dared to express some dissatisfaction.
    “Thanks for tidying,” I say and then kick myself. Why do I say thank you for tidying, when it would never occur to him to say thanks to me? All I do is perpetuate the idea that it is my job to clean and anything he does is a gift to me.
    “Pleasure,” he says. “Well, not really. Cleaning is bloody boring, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “We ought to get a cleaner.”
    “We’ve got one.”
    “Not you. I mean a proper one.”
    “We have. Kasia. She comes on Tuesdays for three hours. I get in a paddy about how messy the house is, you tell me not to be so suburban, cleaning the house for the cleaner, we argue about what she’s there for, and you complain as she puts your flowery shirts in my cupboard as she evidently can’t countenance a man wearing such fripperies.”
    “Oh yes, her. Well we ought to get her more often, then. Although are we exploiting a woman from a poorer nation so that we don’t have to do our own manual labor? Can it ever be right to have someone else get on their hands and knees in your own house?”
    “There is something very, I don’t know, supplicating, about cleaning floors and toilets, I agree.” I stop myself from pointing out that the only time he gets on all fours is to amuse the boys by pretending to be a hippo. I spot a half-eaten biscuit on the floor and immediately get down to pick it up. While there, I start trying to pick out debris from under the fridge.
    “Kasia’s the one who’s always throwing paper into the rubbish bin instead of the recycling, isn’t she?” he says.
    “And cleaning the house with paper towels and vacuuming the kitchen floor instead of wiping it and asking for powerful chemical detergents and putting the washing machine on with just a couple of dish towels inside.”
    “Really? Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he asks.
    I shrug. “I’ve never met an environmentally conscious cleaner.”
    “That’s a bit rubbish of her. Have you had a word with her?”
    “No, god, no, I’d never do that. If we’re so awful that we need someone else to clean our toilets for us, then the last thing I’d do is give her strictures on how to do it.”
    “It is pretty awful that we have a cleaner, isn’t it? I mean, we’re young and healthy, perhaps we should do it ourselves.”
    “Why is it that it’s socially acceptable to subcontract traditionally male jobs, like painting the house or clearing out the garden, but somehow I should feel ashamed about the fact that we have a cleaner for three hours a week? Ursula never felt guilty, did she?”
    “True,” he says. “And we always had a daily, so called because she came in every day.”
    “Not that it did much good.”
    “True. OK, so we have a cleaner, but couldn’t we find someone a bit more environmentally sound? Is there no agency for green cleaners? Greeners, maybe?” He chortles.
    “Like I say, I don’t think those that clean can ever have the luxury