The Coral Gables Times

Thursday, February 8, 1962, page 45 (of 46)

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Don't Worry, Darling

Continued from page 6 Another of my inventions—cleaning cart loaded for bear, and ever ready. walks an average of six miles a day. I can believe it. She must also stoop and squat another half mile a day. It seemed to me that with a little creative thinking and experimentation, I should be able to eliminate much of the time Mary and her sisters-in-homemaking spend walking, jogging, stooping, pushing, pulling, and kneeling. It was with considerable pride, therefore, that I perfected my first Time and Energy Saver. I simply assembled in one central place all the equipment I would need for the day's cleaning—broom, dustpan, dry mop, bucket of water (half full, to avoid sloshing), ammonia, sponge, rags, floor waxer, wax, vacuum cleaner, and assorted soaps, abrasives, and detergents. I piled these neatly in our garden cart and with very little effort pulled it from room to room. Of course, this method works best if you live, as we do, in a ranch house and if the garden cart has never been used outdoors. MY SECOND cleaning invention was designed to correct the problem, inherent in old-fashioned or broom cleaning: getting that last little pile of stuff into the dustpan without backing into the wall on the opposite side of the room. First, I purchased a long-handled dustpan of the type used by those uniformed gentlemen who sweep up cigarette butts in the lobbies of our leading hotels. I took this to my neighbor, Jim Gerrity, a good man with tools. I had him cut off the two outside corners of the pan to a 90-degree angle. I now had a long-handled, triangular dustpan. The new procedure was this: I started sweeping in the middle of the room and swept everything into the corners. Then I brought my triangular dustpan smartly into each corner, being careful to hit both baseboards and to keep the bottom of the pan flat on the floor. Dirt that doesn't make the pan doesn't amount to much and can be ignored. I next brought my newly awakened talents to bear on the fluff problem—dust under the beds. This I brought under control with my Fluff Catcher Method. It works as follows: Crisscross approximately 300 yards of Scotch tape (the widest available) back and forth across the bedroom at various levels until the room resembles a giant spider web. Then place electric fans on the floor to blow the fluff out from under the beds. Leave the room while the fluff floats and billows gently in the breeze, eventually settling on the sticky surface of the tape. Return in about an hour with rubber gloves and haul in the tape. I didn't really mind putting in a 12-hour day at all the tasks I've mentioned in this article. After all, our wives do as much. But I did resent having my 12 hours stretched to 13 or more by the telephone. Half of the calls were for the boys or one of their semi-tenant pals. The other half were for Mary, equally divided between friends who did not know she had gone to her mother's and friends who did. In either case, I would be in for 10 minutes of nonstop advice on running the house and managing the boys, with insistent offers to run right over and help. It was the day I answered the telephone four times without intermission that Providence gave me the idea of the Conversation Terminator. This is a short sentence that will enable you to hang up immediately on even your wife's best friend. The following proved to be the most effective: "Can't talk any more now. I see water trickling down the hall from the direction of the bathroom." "Sorry to hang up, but one of Butch's friends is throwing darts at the portrait of Mary's grandmother." "Guess I'd better get off the phone. Butch is shaving Jamie's head." "I must dash. The couple who are going to adopt Jamie have just arrived." (Thickly, hiccupping. To be used only after 6 p.m.) "How about a martini? I jes' had my seventh an' I do believe I'm goin' to . . . to . . . (Drop receiver loudly.) Mary got back one evening just before dinnertime. I had everything in apple-pie order. All three boys had bathed or been bathed. The house, I thought, looked immaculate. Potatoes were baking and string beans steaming. A two-inch steak was ready for the charcoal. I was wearing my chef's apron and hat. After giving me a quick kiss, hugging the boys, and sweeping the living room with her beautiful eyes, Mary said, the very first thing (and I quote), "You poor dears! It's about time Mommy came home and fixed you some nourishing food and got rid of all this filth!" Suburbia Today, February 1962 27

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