Out! Damn Spot!

As it is Mother’s Day, I thought I would share a bit of family history with my 2 remaining readers (THANKS MOM AND CATE!).

Lady Macbeth, who some misinformed people consider fictional, was actually my greatx20-grandaunt. Those same people consider guilt the reason for her madness. That’s only because they don’t know her genetics. The thought of blood on a wood floor before the availability of bleach will turn any self-respecting Pitts woman into a case study for the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Psychiatric Disorders.

Due to this fact, bleach was introduced to the world of cleaning by my greatx4 grandma, Blanche (whose name has been changed 1) because it’s funnier and 2) because I’m too lazy to look up my ancestry). Blanche had made a dreadful error in her life by accepting the position offered her by the local doctor. Blanche’s respect for cleanliness, obsession with “helpfulness”, and ability to engage any person in conversation made her appear perfect for the job.

The doctor underestimated Blanche’s need for perfect environments. The blood-stained hospital sheets maintained a yellow hue despite hours of washing. And the floors! Blanche, who cleaned her house twice before breakfast, once at noon, and thrice before bed, became physically ill at the knowledge that blood continued in the grains of the apparently clean boards. No small number of persons attempted to convince Blanche that the floor was clean after its 100th daily cleaning, but Blanche KNEW that there were blood stains. She could smell them, even if they weren’t visible.

One day, just like her grandaunt Lady Macbeth, Blanche reached her mental end. She requested a strong poison from the local quack. He handed her a vial of sodium hypochlorite. His warning that it would be a messy death almost scared her off the idea, but the thought of those filthy floors cemented her resolve.

Blanche selected a very slightly off-white chamber pot (Why couldn’t others see the filth? It was awful! She thought of how it had once gleamed white and now it was, well, not white. It was as filthy as a pig sty – this phrase was created by Blanche) and retreated to the woods. She wouldn’t think of leaving vomit in the house. That smell lingers.

As she lifted the vial, she remembered that the quack’s home hadn’t been very tidy. She cleaned the top of the vial. It burned her fingers, so she washed her hand with the water she had brought to clean the pot after she vomited. As the drops hit the basin, she noticed something miraculous. The pot returned to gleaming white!

Blanche cleaned the rest of the pot, thrilled to be alive and absolutely in love with the pleasant, fresh scent. Then she cleaned the entire house, including the walls. Even her hairless fingers seemed to sparkle with renewed splendor.

She returned to work after buying every vial from the frightened quack, who assumed Blanche was a poltergeist. Crazed Blanche cleaned the floors until she detected only the pleasant aroma of sodium hypochlorite, eventually called “bleach” after an unfortunate misspelling of Blanche’s name by the barely literate doctor. The doctors thought the glittering tools, smelly floors, and starch white sheets frightening, but Blanche was obviously determined, and no one stands between a Pitts woman and her mission.

Blanche returned to happiness, married some Mormon guy, and moved to Utah. Years later, the doctor realized that there had been surprisingly few deaths during Blanche’s reign over the hospital. Thus, the antiseptic theory of medicine was born.

Blanche didn’t care about all that. She was too busy cleaning. She passed on her secrets to her daughters and her granddaughters. One of those women was my Grandma Pitts.

Grandma studied to be a nurse. She knew that bleach was great, but didn’t kill all the nasty bugs. For some viruses, ammonia was necessary. Unfortunately, Grandma Pitts didn’t know much about concentration camps, so she decided to mix bleach and ammonia. My mother discovered her passed out on the most antiseptic floor in America. She recovered from the fumes, but never really believed her home could be clean without the use of both substances.

My mother later discovered that Lysol (which kills 99.9% of all germs, including E.Coli and Salmonella) plus 1 teaspoon Joy dishwashing detergent reduced streaks IF you scrubbed really hard and dried the walls immediately (You didn’t assume we only cleaned normal surfaces daily? What about the disgusting spots on walls, the gick under tables, the muck behind the refrigerator, and the flakes in the toaster?). I spent most of my Saturdays cleaning the bathroom while my mother hallucinated streaks. My mother is the only person I have ever met who cleans her house so that it won’t be dirty when the maid arrives.

Then, one day, my Pitts cleaning gene emerged. I was cleaning the entry to my apartment. I wiped it, but thousands of small, black lines had appeared. I scrubbed until the tile gleamed. I looked up at the door and saw the same black streaks. I mixed a new batch of Lysol plus Joy before undertaking to scrub the entire apartment from floor to ceiling, a pattern I was condemned by my genetic code to repeat 1-2 times per week.

Thanks to my background in chemistry, I have finally achieved the dream of so many generations. This Saturday, I used both ammonia and bleach to clean my floors and bathroom. The trick is to use two separate rags. I also recommend you open a window and not breathe very much. If you feel faint, call your medical care professional, who will likely remind you not to get your information from an obsessive-compulsive blogger who claims her grandma invented bleach. You may require several days of intensive care, but, if you have the Pitts gene, it will seem a small price to pay for an antiseptic environment.

P.S. I just realized that this post on cleanliness will be listed next to my post on godliness. Somewhere, the entire line of Pitts women is smiling.