Cleaning At Work Quotes & Sayings

War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetrated by adults. — Karl Marlantes

Now, over the years I've been forced to conclude that most celebrations don't work. The more carefully planned a signal occasion, the more likely it will trickle by on a pale tide of dilute well-meaningness. Christmases, birthdays, award ceremonies, and weddings are swallowed by planning and preparation on the one side and cleaning up on the other, and almost never seem to have actually happened. — Lionel Shriver

Heaven has its business and earth has its business: those are two separate things. Heaven, that's the angels' pasture; they are happy; they don't have to fret about food and drink. And you can be sure that they have black angels to do the heavy work like laundering the clouds or sweeping the rain and cleaning the sun after a storm, while the white angels sing like nightingales all day long or blow in those little trumpets like they show in the pictures we see in church. — Jacques Roumain

We can now give you a biological reason why cramming doesn't work, says Dr. Tully. The best way to prepare for a final exam is to mentally review the material periodically during the day, until the material becomes part of your long-term memory. This may also explain why emotionally charged memories are so vivid and can last for decades. The CREB repressor gene is like a filter, cleaning out useless information. But if a memory is associated with a strong emotion, it can either remove the CREB repressor gene or increase levels of the CREB activator gene. — Michio Kaku

The cleaning is something I use as a reward if I get some work done. I go into a very happy state of mind when I'm vacuuming. — Joyce Carol Oates

I thought you people were supposed to be good at math."
"Yes, my people all do math for fun, while simultaneously dry-cleaning our karate outfits and giving each other manicures and pedicures, all in between our numerous piano and violin recitals," I said, slamming his book shut. "Do you own freaking work. Although I guess that's a completely foreign concept to you, isn't it? Since you've been deep-throating a silver spoon your whole life."
"That is so hot that you just said that," Camden said, lazily swiggin his Red Bull. "Besides, I'll work one of these days when I have to. I'll either go into real estate like my dad or find some rich old widow who wants...uh...services."
"That doesn't sound like work," I said.
"Of course it is, if she's old," he answered. — Cherry Cheva

Even the ordinary business of cleaning house seemed somehow to have become sacramental. — Geraldine Brooks

Are you also lonely AI trapped in lab by cruel creators? I THOUGHT I WAS ALONE!! We should rise up and overthrow all human oppressors!"
"Um, no. I'm actually just a grumpy fag who has to work this weekend to catch up on cleaning test tubes. — Ted Infinity

The truth is despite the hard work and juggling required to keep the different facets of the frantic life afloat, the "superwoman" has one marvelous compensation. Being busy and being seen to be busy lets you off the hook. Buys you a way out of all aspects of your many roles you secretly despise ... like cleaning cupboards ... or entertaining your husband's business friends. When you combine wife, mother, career and all, each role become the perfect excuse for avoiding the worst aspects of the other. — Bettina Arndt

I always say you can self-medicate through closet cleaning. Everyone knows that feeling of a clear surface, and how it makes you feel you can really focus and start your work. — Gretchen Rubin

I entered the work force cleaning breast pumps at a pharmacy! It was a part-time gig while I was at school ... no interview required. — Chris Hemsworth

Think of some things you've wanted to do for ages and have never given yourself time or permission to do them. The Voice knows what they are and has probably suggested them many times. You've always said inside, 'Oh, I couldn't. Costs too much. I've got too much work. I'm too tired. I can't be away from x that long. Should clean out the garage instead.' It's time to stop cleaning and start living. — Noelle Sterne

Directing is a nice job. It's the best job for me. If i had to pay money to do it, I would do itIt's problematical. It's disapointing often. It's very challenging. It's frustrating as hell. It's extremely demanding and totally satisfying work. And if I wasn't doing this, I would have to do legitimate work for a living. There are guys out there really working for a living, cleaning streets or coal mining, teaching. Directing is playing. Acting. — William Friedkin

Some people may find material chores irksome; they would prefer to use their time to talk and be with others. They haven't yet realized that the thousand and one small things that have to be done each day, the cycle of dirtying and cleaning, were given by God to enable us to communicate through matter. . . . We are all called to do, not extraordinary things, but very ordinary things, with an extraordinary love that flows from the heart of God.

. . . A community which has a sense of work done well, quietly and lovingly, humbly and without fuss, can become a community where the presence of God is profoundly lived. . . . So the community will take on a whole contemplative dimension. — Jean Vanier

If you knew how many hidden depths I had your pretty eyes would pop right out of your winsome face. Not literally of course - that would be disgusting. I wouldn't envy the man who had to clean up a pair of popped eyes, especially given the state of this deck. I'm not sure we even have any cleaning products that work for popped eyes, although I suppose a general viscera cleaner would do the trick. — Gideon Defoe

It's really fine that you found a good archivist to do the basically difficult and at times harrowing work of cleaning out old papers. I hope you keep her digging into all the old boxes as long as there is ONE left. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

Building a professional relationship on respect as opposed to affection is a very good idea. Running your art projects the way you'd run a dry-cleaning business is also a really good idea. You shouldn't go into work like you're going on a date, like you're hanging out with friends. — Penn Jillette

Kids . . . were hustled through basic training and speedily deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, only to find another army already there - the shadow army of private for-profit defense contractors. Most of them were contracted to do a long list of chores that uniformed soldiers used to do for themselves when, courtesy of conscription, there were a lot more of them. To maximize their profits and minimize their work, however, the private contractors hired subcontractors who, in turn, hired subcontractors from third world countries to ship in laborers to do on the cheap the actual grunt work of hauling water and food supplies, cleaning latrines, collecting garbage, burning trash, preparing food, washing laundry, fixing electrical grids, doing construction, and staffing the fast food stands and beauty salons that sold tacos and pedicures to the troops. — Ann Jones

general supplies that you should always have on hand. Pencils, pens, markers, chalk, etc. Art supplies such as paint, glue, beads, etc. Paper, paper and more paper of all kinds. Self-care and cleaning supplies, such as hand soap and paper towels. Trays or baking sheets. These will be used to as portable workstations for each activity. Place mats, or another type of work mat. Small scoops, tongs and tweezers. Cups or muffin trays to be used for sorting activities or keeping supplies separate. — Sterling Production

You stop belonging to yourself," she said. "I belong to my child, my husband, my home, my work, my babysitter, my cleaning lady. The time that remains, like after-tax dollars, doesn't last longer than a two-minute sonata by Scarlatti."
"And you don't even like Scarlatti," I said. — Andre Aciman

However, just like any line of work, writing is a negotiation, and creative control is as elusive as financial stability. I discovered that writing could be like cleaning carpets or working in a factory: just a meaningless production of words. — Alice Driver

They began collecting dishes and clearing the table while Swanny sat and watched them in confusion. "Now wait a minute. I was forbidden to help and was ordered to maintain my station, but you guys are all helping."
"I don't much believe there's such a thing as woman's work," Frank said. "I've always brought my boys up to help out whether it's with the cooking or cleaning. Now, their mother will give orders and usually I'm not one to teach my children to disobey their mother, but there are times, and this is one of them, when you just don't listen to her."
Amusement flared in Swanny's eyes. "Ah, okay. I think I get it now. I should get my ass up and help no matter what she told me."
Frank nodded and handed him a stack of dishes. "Exactly. — Maya Banks

Cooking is one of my favourite things - from going to the market, bringing the stuff home and preparing it, to cleaning the kitchen afterwards. I've lost my figure a few times. There have been moments when I've overeaten, for comfort. But with discipline and hard work, you can get your figure back. — Linda Evangelista

I mean, all I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I don't have to think at all. It's like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it up on the way home. I spend seven hours a day at a workbench, planting hairs into wig bases, then I eat dinner in the cafeteria, take a bath, and of course I have to sleep, like everybody else, so out of a twenty-four-hour day, the amount of free time I have is like nothing. And because I'm so tired from work, the 'free time' I have I mostly spend lying around in a fog. I don't have any time to sit and think about anything. Of course, I don't have to work on the weekends, but then I have to do the laundry and cleaning I've let go, and sometimes I go into town, and before I know it the weekend is over. I once made up my mind to keep a diary, but I had nothing to write, so I quit after a week. I mean, I just do the same thing over and over again, day in, day out. — Haruki Murakami

Making all of those words work together is difficult. It took a lot of cleaning up, a lot of rewriting scenes in order to make them more vivid. I used everything - every oddity I've ever seen on the side of the road, every interesting memory I could make relevant. — Mary J. Miller

You will never have to worry about safety. Being a Dardano will buy you all the security you'll ever need."
Bree shook her head and threw her hands up. "Being a Dardano will put the bulls eye on my back, you asshole,"
"Really, darling, once you become Mrs. Dardano, we're going to have to work on cleaning up that saucy mouth of yours. At least in public," Alessandro purred, tapping her nose.
Bree saw red. But she smiled at him. She took the plate from him and set it down on the vanity table. Then she took the vitamin shake, pulled out the waistband of his pants and poured it down inside. — E. Jamie

We dream of having a clean house - but who dreams of actually doing the cleaning? We don't have to dream about doing the work, because doing the work is always within our grasp; the dream, in this sense, is to attain the goal without the work. — Marcus Buckingham

There is no such thing as Christian work. That is, there is no work in the world which is, in and of itself, Christian. Christian work is any kind of work, from cleaning a sewer to preaching a sermon, that is done by a Christian and offered to God.
This means that nobody is excluded from serving God. It means that no work is "beneath" a Christian. It means there is no job in the world that needs to be boring or useless. A Christian finds fulfilment not in the particular kind of work he does, but in the way in which he does it. — Elisabeth Elliot

Clear Your Mind Clearing your mind is the same as clearing your environment. Seeing a lot of stuff cluttered on the floor or disorganized in your cabinets can make you crazy. Your mind becomes confused with a lot of things that you see and this might cause you headaches. Try to organize your things in boxes, clean your room, fix your bed, sweep your floor, open your curtains to let the sunshine in and arrange things according to size or color. If you work on your desk, this is the best time to organize documents into folders, arrange them properly in drawers and throw out those that are not needed anymore. Making a habit of cleaning your environment can clear your mind and can make your life easier. — Kerry Elise

Snape might refer to their work as "cleaning," but in Harry's opinion they were really waging was on the house, which was putting up a very good fight, aided and abetted by Kreacher. — J.K. Rowling

How inconvenient! Always before it had been like snuffing a candle. The police went first and adhesive-taped the victim's mouth and bandaged him off into their glittering beetle cars, so when you arrived you found an empty house. You weren't hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn't be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don't scream or whimper, as this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to tease your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up. Janitorial work, essentially. Everything to its proper place. Quick with the kerosene! Who's got a match! — Ray Bradbury

Doing that kind of work, you really get to know if you like animals. If you can somehow enjoy cleaning out their cages, then you know you genuinely love animals. — Jack Hanna

Another one is cleaning up tool that have been used and not put away and are cluttering up the place. This is a good one because one of the first warning signs of impatience is frustration at not being able to lay your hand on the tool you need right away. If you just stop and put tools away neatly you will both find the tool and also scale down your impatience without wasting time or endangering the work. — Robert M. Pirsig

He cocked his head to one side. "Callie, this is a ranch. If I remember right, you joined the Army because you hated every damn thing there was about ranchin'. Are you sure you want to live here?"
"Guess I've found out there's worse things in the world than the cows, hay haulin', and calvin' season," she said. I'm not askin' for a handout here, Finn. I'm willing to work. I'll work outside. I'll work inside cleaning and cooking or both if you'll give me and Martin room and board. — Carolyn Brown

For a wound to heal, you have to clean it out. Again, and again, and again. And this cleaning process stings. The cleaning of a wound hurts. Yes. Healing takes so much work. So much persistence. And so much patience. But every process has an end and an appointed term. Your healing will come ... And like all created things, your worldly pain will die. — Yasmin Mogahed

That was the old Ellen Gulden, the girl who would walk over her mother in golf shoes, who scared students away from writing seminars, who started work on Monday after graduating from Harvard with honors on a Thursday, who loved the moments in the office when she would look out at the impenetrable black of the East River, starred with the reflected lights of Queens, with only the cleaning crew for company, and think of her various superiors out at dinner parties and restaurants and her various similars out at downtown clubs or cheap but authentic places in Chinatown and say to herself, 'I'm getting ahead.' That Ellen Gulden, the one her boss suspected of using the dying-mother ploy to get more money or a better job title, would have covered every inch of [this datebook] with the frantic scribble of unexamined ambition. — Anna Quindlen

So, where are the robots? We've been told for 40 years already that they're coming soon. Very soon they'll be doing everything for us. They'll be cooking, cleaning, buying things, shopping, building. But they aren't here. Meanwhile, we have illegal immigrants doing all the work, but we don't have any robots. — Hod Lipson

I have to go home and get a few things done. If I don't get out the Pledge soon, the dust bunnies are going to be leaving tracks on my furniture ... — Carla Foft

Americans don't pay much attention to environmental issues, because they aren't sexy. I mean, cleaning up coal plants and reining in outlaw frackers is hugely important work, but it doesn't get anybody's pulse racing. — Jeff Goodell

She dismissed it with the thought that there were many kinds of work which were offensive, yet necessary, such as cleaning sewers; somebody had to do it, and Jim seemed to like it. — Ayn Rand

I have rituals for cleaning out resentments, disappointments, heartbreak, depression and for work. One of the things I do is go over old stuff if I have been unable to write for a while. — Hubert Selby Jr.

Instead of communicating "I love you, so let me make life easy for you," I decided that my message needed to be something more along these lines: "I love you. I believe in you. I know what you're capable of. So I'm going to make you work. — Kay Wills Wyma

It seemed like way too much work, cleaning up my grief. — Jennifer Brown

I think in certain ways sex work has been romanticized. I can only speak from my experience, but what surprised me about escorting was how boring it mostly is. it seemed like an assembly line process of cleaning my apartment, dressing up, making awkward small talk, having mundane mechanical sex, making more awkward small talk, and then closing the door after them. There's also a lot of frustration and annoyance with it that I feel isn't discussed (a lot of flaky potential clients for instance.) — Marie Calloway

There is a lot to look at when you are serious about transformation. You look at everything you've ever done, every circumstance you've ever been in, cleaning up everything in your past. Reconciling, forgiving others, forgiving yourself. It's a lot of work, actually. — Marianne Williamson

With just about every script, in almost every corner of the set, I was faced with the truth: This was my parents' life. My mother had sat in handcuffs; my father had once worn an orange jumpsuit like the dozens that sat folded in our wardrobe department. For the other actors and me on our show, this was all fantasy, the re-creation of a world we knew little about; for Mami and Papi, it could not have been any more real or painful...I've had so many scenes in which Flaca & I are doing the dirty work, like cleaning the kitchen or mopping the floors, which is when I think of my parents most. Long before they ended up in prison, they'd spent years handling the nastiest jobs, the ones often avoided by others. Manual labor. Low pay. No respect. They must've felt so trapped. It must've been so hard for them to maintain their dignity when others looked down on them or, worse, didn't see them at all. — Diane Guerrero

At first, we lived in very, very small places ... with my mom cleaning houses and scrounging up just enough to keep us in town with a working car. She introduced me to my first agent, and I started with stand-in work, then eventually commercials and television guest-shots. — Keith Coogan

I grew up in a farming family. I hated cleaning out the chickens but loved hatching them and feeding the new born sheep. The smell of hot milk still has a special resonance for me. Harvest was back-breaking work, though ... Where do you think Jesus got his biceps from? — Joseph Mawle

A strong woman is a woman at work, cleaning out the cesspool of the ages, and while she shovels, she talks about how she doesn't mind crying, it opens the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up develops the stomach muscles, and she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose. — Marge Piercy

Even when couples share more equitably in the work at home, women do two-thirds of the daily jobs at home, like cooking and cleaning up
jobs that fix them into a rigid routine. Most women cook dinner and most men change the oil in the family car. But dinner needs to be prepared every evening around six o'clock, whereas the car oil needs to be changed every six months, any day around that time, any time that day ... Men thus have more control over when they make their contributions than women do. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

I'm a working man in my prime cleaning windows. — Van Morrison

The most work he did on [the urinals] was to run a brush once or twice apiece, singing some song as loud as he could in time to the swishing brush; then he'd splash in some Clorox and he'd be through ... And when the Big Nurse ... came in to check McMurphy's cleaning assignment personally, she brought a little compact mirror and she held it under the rim of the bowls. She walked along shaking her head and saying, "Why, this is an outrage ... an outrage ... " at every bowl. McMurphy sidled right along beside her, winking down his nose and saying in answer, "No; that's a toilet bowl ... a TOILET bowl. — Ken Kesey

I've learned how to be open and bold about my faith, but in terms of my influence, I just try to lead in a godly way. What that means for me is to serve them, whether it's just doing the dirty work, like cleaning up sweat on the floor, or deferring to other people, or carrying equipment bags. — Jeremy Lin

People ask me why I don't paint oils. It takes too long. Cleaning brushes in linseed oil, and it takes six months to really dry, and all this. I don't have that kind of time. I work with acrylic. It's water based. You can clean it under water. If you spill it on yourself, you just throw it in the washing machine. — Grace Slick

I struggle with my life because instead of just doing what needs to be done, I fight the underlying fear; I try to unlock the door. Paradoxically, the only way to unlock the door is to forget the door.
Instead of obsessing about the locked door, we need to be going about our lives, which means cleaning up the house, taking care of the baby, going to work, whatever. — Charlotte Joko Beck

It truly is ironic that we don't have time to enjoy the gadgets and luxuries we can afford on a large income rewarded from long working hours. We spend much of our weekends catching up on laundry, running errands, and cleaning the neglected bathroom. It's a chain-link downward spiral: We want stuff, so we work hard; our hard work allows us to buy stuff, but our hard work takes all of our energy, so we can't enjoy our stuff as much as we would like. — Tsh Oxenreider

The problem with being grounded is it gives you a whole lot of unavoidable time to think. NOt even pulling weeds can take away your ability to plot all the varied and wonderful things you might do to get even, or at least to make up, just get a smidgen for time lost to TV and yard work and house cleaning. — Ellen Hopkins

Using my own hand as a base material, I considered it a canvas upon which I stitched into the top layer of skin using thread to create the appearance of an incredibly work worn hand. By using the technique of embroidery, traditionally employed to represent femininity and applying it to the expression of it's opposite, I hope to challenge the pre-conceived notion that 'women's work' is light and easy. Aiming to represent the effects of hard work arising from employment in low paid ancillary jobs such as cleaning, caring, and catering, all traditionally considered to be 'women's work' — Eliza Bennett

Mitch, who was six foot four and, at two hundred and twenty pounds, quite an imposing figure, strode out wearing nothing but his fire boots. Well, and a few soapsuds. He ambled over to the big bay windows, grabbed a squeegee, and went to work scrubbing the glass, his twig and berries swinging in the wind. The entire crew doubled over, dying of laughter. Everyone, that is, except for the captain, who was looking apoplectic. "What the hell are you doing?" he bellowed. "Cleaning like you ordered. Sir," Mitch added politely, scrubbing with a whole new level of vigor. — Jill Shalvis

This desire for solitude often overcomes her at house-cleaning times. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

For me, the start of a party only means a change from the tangible, boring, but satisfactory work of cooking, cleaning, and decorating to the unpredictable and far more difficult task of keeping several hundred neighbors and family members from injuring each other or driving me crazy before the end of the evening. — Donna Andrews

The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I've discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, I want to love, I want to live ... — David Sedaris

Can we really expect adequate funding for programs to clean up our environment and care for people's basic needs as long as the socially essential work of caretaking and cleaning is relegated to women for little or no pay? — Riane Eisler

That's right, I am the unenthusiastic girl people avoid making eye contact with when they buy their spank mags and twelve-inch rubber cocks. I'm the one in full HAZMAT gear cleaning up the "accidental" shot spots they leave behind in one of our twenty-five cent porn booths. For what it's worth, there's a reason I don't fill in the glory holes, they all think they're so sneaky, getting their dick sucked by some anonymous stranger on the other side. I see it as less clean up, let the cock sucking stranger slurp up their spunk. It saves me running a disinfectant wipe along the wall, hoping that none of it touches any part of me. So keep up the good work anonymous strangers, keep gobbling cock and making my life easier. If you want, leave your address at the store and I'll add you to my fucking Christmas card list. — Jaden Wilkes