Jen Laird White

Okay, so did anyone read the fabulous New York Times piece by Jane Brody (CLICK HERE )that pointed out, finally, once and for all something I’ve dared dream for years.  Yes, it seem, that  there is definitive, that’s right, clear definitive evidence now that houses that are too clean breed children with allergies and asthma.  I KNEW IT.  Or at least I prayed that it was true.   My kids are like bulls.  They rarely get sick, when they do it lasts for five minutes, and it’s all because I AM THE WORLDS WORST HOUSEKEEPER.  And now I can say it proud.  Say it loud.  My house is filthy.  Dust kitties, real kitties.  A long haired dog that sheds.  Piles of stuff in corners that I can’t bring myself to throw away, just in case I might actually need that coupon for 50% off new cabinetry even though we have new cabinetry.  You never know when your cabinetry might go bad.  I’m sure it can happen.  So I save.  My husband hates it.  Every so often when work is slow and he’s around the house more, he cleans.  And as he cleans, he mutters and glares at me in disgust.  Just sly glances but deep with desire for a different, cleaner wife.  The first time he ever went to my friend Heidi’s house, Heidi who has a shoes off policy so strict that if you walk in her door and stand in the doorway waiting to borrow a cup of sugar or, more likely, a bottle of red wine, she can not focus on what you are asking if your shoes are on.  She literally can not hear you.  Of course, it’s pathological of me but I get great pleasure in standing there sloooowly moving my feet just a teeny, tiny bit to terrorize her.  However, only when I remove my shoes, after she points out that I am behaving like a naughty child, do I get what I want.  Be it sugar or wine.  Well, when Rich first went to Heidi’s house, he looked around, first in amazement and then in awe, and then, gazing at me sadly, muttered, “I want to live here”.  Fine.  He can move in with Heidi and they will die a slow painful death from some cleanliness plague.  I’ll stay here with the kids, the cats, the dogs, the gerbils, the dust kittys and cobwebs and stacks of really important things and furniture that you might refinish one day and stuffed animals that the kids still might want and all those containers that I might need for cooking and, well, you know.   We will live forever.