Window cleaning is my least favourite household chore, followed by ironing, nevertheless it is one of those things that I love to procrastinate even though I know that once I get off my lazy butt, the results will be worthwhile. I used to have a neighbour in Berlin who would clean her windows as part of her personal anger management therapy, whereas I move furniture. I I never understood the fascination with window cleaning but as I grew older, it begins to make more and more sense. Said neighbour had the cleanest windows in the entire building and we used to joke that she must be constantly mad at the world!
Portuguese winters are very wet, which means that instead of snow we get endless rain and occasionally hail. So when this happens the windows are self-cleaning and I don’t really have to lift a finger to keep them clean. Until the rain stops. And the cats jump up to the windowsill with there dirty paws and place their breakfast or dinner orders. This is subsequently followed by the delusion that there must be something wrong with my contact lenses or glasses that I can no longer see clearly from the kitchen counter or stove.
I’ve been very fortunate this year thus far that we seem to have an extended remix of winter, which means it’s been cold, rainy and cloudy most of the time, unlike last year when I was already sporting shorts and t-shirts at this time. I’ve attempted to pack my winter blanket and wardrobe away twice, and each time I shut the cabinet door with glee, the temperatures drop overnight and we are back to single digits celsius. It is not the glorified Iberian weather that everyone and their uncle flocks to Portugal for, and in recent weeks it has felt more like Central European weather, triggering flashbacks of why I left Berlin in the first place. Excuses, excuses, I know.
At some point last week my conscience got the better of me and I decided to tear myself away from my Kindle book boyfriends and put the good old elbow grease to work again. Armed with a window wiper, a bowl of dish soap and water, and a scrubber, I got on the mini ladder and scrubbed the bejeezers out of those windows! The cats were all fascinated albeit not a single one volunteered to help out. The results were so cool that I had to take a couple of shots in the evening after I finished as well as the next morning:
They are spotless and squeaky clean, to the extent that I had to double take when I walked in the next morning and thought. had left the window open the whole night. The cats are amused by the new transparency policy in the house and have been polite enough to refrain from leaving there paw prints. The bees, bumblebees and flies are confused though and keep bumping into the glass and can’t figure out how to get out. It made me wonder about the real and imaginary boundaries we set ourselves and prevent us from moving forward, moving on.
This entire process was meditative as it was symbolic. We tend to hang on to the dirt blurriness in our lives, fooling ourselves to believe that all this dirt and mess is a protective layer that we hind behind and avoid the real issues or in some cases, the hard work; the soul work. I won’t lie, 2024 has been a major uphill battle for me thus far, and I buried myself under so many protective layers over the past four months that I lost myself for a while. But cleaning the windows reminded me that there can be no clarity without work, and this include soul searching, introspection, prayer, and action. Some decisions are more difficult to make than others, and letting go is easier said than done.
FrogDiva Thoughts 