theyre a handful

she was a woman who gave her life to housework, to the kind of daily routines of polishing, dusting, vacuuming and tidying that were once common, and these days are only undertaken by patients with obsessive compulsive disorders. every day, while Henry was a school, she spring-cleaned her house, she drew her deepest satisfactions from a tray of well-roasted beef, the sheen on a nest of tables, a pile of ironed candy-striped sheets folded in smooth slabs, a larder of neat provisions...the invisible sides, the obverse, the underneath and the insides of everything were clean. the oven and its racks were scrubbed after every use. order and cleanliness were the outward expression of an unspoken ideal of love. a book he was reading would be back in the hallway shelf upstairs as soon as he put it aside. the morning paper could be in the dustbin by lunchtime. the empty milk bottles she put out for collection were as clean as her cutlery. to every item, its drawer and shelf or hook, including her various aprons, and her yellow rubber gloves held by a clothes peg, hanging near the egg-shaped egg-timer.

ian mcewan, saturday

that is the best description of how it is living with my mother, that i have ever come across. its a strange world, as though the film crew from architectural digest is going to pop around any second and shoot the place, or test her house on its cleanliness levels. its real fun being around OCDs i can tell you.