Quotes & Sayings About Cleaning

The apartment is a laboratory in which we conduct experiments, perform research on each other. We discover Henry hates it when I absentmindedly click my spoon against my teeth while reading the paper at breakfast. We agree that it is okay for me to listen to Joni Mitchell and it is okay for Henry to listen to the Shaggs as long as the other person isn't around. We figure out that Henry should do all the cooking and I should be in charge of laundry and neither of us is willing to vacuum so we hire a cleaning service. — Audrey Niffenegger

Our possessions are dictating our free time. Sundays used to be for relaxing and eating, and now they're spent cleaning the garage. --pg55 — Cristin Frank

I rushed to the bathroom for every corner of the hospital was suffocating. I got hold of acid-bottle, which was meant for toilet cleaning. As I took it into my hands, I realized I had more filth inside me than a toilet. A toilet could be cleaned by an acid bottle, or a toilet cleaner, but there was no such product that could cleanse a criminal from inside. I felt so ashamed of myself that I couldn't even look into the eyes of my reflection in the mirror on the wall. — Mehek Bassi

I had a Saturday job in a chemist. The pay was something ridiculous like £2 an hour - it was slave labour - and I spent all day cleaning shelves. On my first day an actress from Eldorado, which was on telly at the time, came in and said, 'Can I have some Replense please?' I didn't know what it was, so I had to ask her and she had to say, 'It's vaginal moisturiser,' in front of a massive queue of people. After one day I was like, 'I don't want to do this job any more, it's just boring.' — Konnie Huq

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

Getting fired can produce a particularly bountiful payday for a CEO. Indeed, he can 'earn' more in that single day, while cleaning out his desk, than an American worker earns in a lifetime of cleaning toilets. Forget the old maxim about nothing succeeding like success: Today, in the executive suite, the all-too-prevalent rule is that nothing succeeds like failure. — Warren Buffett

She blew out a sigh and focused her attention on the students in her class taking a test. There was nothing like a teenage boy cleaning his ears with the eraser of his pencil to squelch sexual desire. — Robin Alexander

Excuse the mess, but we live here. — Roseanne Barr

My robust lexicon notwithstanding, I struggle to find the right words to describe just how much I despise, hate, abhor, revile, detest and categorically abominate anything to do with home maintenance. While cooking strikes me as an essentially creative act, cleaning seems little more than an exercise in decay management, enough to trigger an existential crisis each time the ring around the toilet bowl reappears. — Rachel Held Evans

All I'm thinking about today is cleaning my bathroom. — Linda Fiorentino

I was going to watch Project Runway," said Jace. "It's on next."
"No, you're not," said Magnus. He snapped his fingers and the TV went off, releasing a small puff of smoke as the picture died. "You need to deal with this."
"Suddenly you're interested in solving my problems?"
"I'm interested in getting my apartment back. I'm tired of you cleaning all the time. — Cassandra Clare

At the request of the Catholic Church, a three-day sex orgy to be held near Rio de Janeiro was cancelled last Friday. So instead I spent the weekend cleaning my apartment. — Tina Fey

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing. — Phyllis Diller

If you want to get rid of stuff, you can always do a good spring-cleaning. Or you can do what I do. Move. — Ellen DeGeneres

He might know things Meg wanted to learn, but he would never be as thorough about cleaning the salt and butter off her hands after movie night. — Anne Bishop

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance. — Erma Bombeck

Immigrants do more than help us win our wars, or set up cleaning shops or ethnic restaurants. — Stephen Ambrose

The movement toward estrangement - from each other, and from themselves - took place in far smaller, subtler steps. They were always becoming closer in the realm of doing - coordinating the ever-expanding routines, talking and texting more (and more efficiently), cleaning together the mess made by the children they made - and farther in feeling. Once, — Jonathan Safran Foer

Housework is like cleaning fish. No matter how often you do it, it still stinks. — Thelma Harper

God's not afraid of a mess. He wants to do a cleaning. — James MacDonald

If we took over Britain, then we'd have the job of cleaning up the bourgeoisie and keeping people in a revolutionary state of mind. — John Lennon

Maybe pick it up by mistake with the cleaning?" "It is there." "With the cleaning?" "In the closet." "No, it isn't. I looked." About to speak, Willie tightened her lips and scowled. Karl had walked in. "Good evening, Madam." He went to the sink for a glass of water. "Did you set those traps?" asked Chris. "No rats." "Did you set them?" "I set them, of course, but the attic is clean." "Tell me, how — William Peter Blatty

The American Left complains that we have no right to be the world's police force. On the contrary. We've been the world's janitor for almost a century, and after September 11, it became obvious it's better, safer, and more productive to change things instead of cleaning up after the mess. — Tammy Bruce

Monsters don't die. They just dissipate into smoke and dust, which saves heroes a lot of trouble cleaning up after a fight. — Rick Riordan

"Do you have any more surprise stowaways up your sleeve?" I ask Morpheus.
Pushing dents out of his hat, he scowls. "I'm starting to fear I didn't bring enough. If there's one thing netherlings are good at, it's cleaning messes." — A.G. Howard

If an inmate swears at a guard, fights, or hides contraband like cigarettes or candy [Sheriff Arpaio has banned coffee, cigarettes, hot lunches, girlie mags & TV], she's kicked out of the tents and sent to lockdown--a tiny cell 10x12 feet that houses 4 women, instead of the 2 it was built for. There's no tv, no phone, & no a/c. Even though most of these women have drug problems, programs like NA or AA are considered 'privileges' forbidden to those locked down. The only way to get out of lockdown is to volunteer for the chain gang--the first & only female chain gang in the United States (as of Aug 1997). Volunteers sign a paper that says they know & accept the conditions on the chain--cleaning Phoenix streets, painting the center strip of miles of highway, & burying AZ's indigent. The accusation of 'cruel & unusual punishment' is quashed by the argument that the chain gang is purely voluntary. After all, if you prefer, you can spend the whole year in lockdown. — Jane Evelyn Atwood

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

I grew up kind of fast. I had a lot of responsibilities-cleaning the house, going to school on my own, making good grades on my own — Hines Ward

I mean, I may not hold the record in cleaning house either, but if I've got old milk cartons that smell like maggots I bundle them up and put them out."
"I'm on a disability pension'" he said. "I'm socially incompetent. — Stieg Larsson

I always clean before the cleaning lady comes. If not, when I come home, I can't find anything. Cleaning ladies are always hiding things you leave out. — Celia Cruz

Mostly, though, he made people laugh, with wicked impersonations of everyone around him: clients, lawyers, clerks, even the cleaning woman. When Pickwick Papers came out, his former colleagues realized that half of them had turned up in its pages. His eyes - eyes that everyone who ever met him, to the day he died, remarked on - beautiful, animated, warm, dreamy, flashing, sparkling - though no two people ever agreed on their colour - were they grey, green, blue, brown? - those eyes missed nothing, any more than did his ears. He could imitate anyone. Brimming over with an all but uncontainable energy, which the twenty-first century might suspiciously describe as manic, he discharged his superplus of vitality by incessantly walking the streets, learning London as he went, mastering it, memorizing the names of the roads, the local accents, noting the characteristic topographies of the many villages of which the city still consisted. — Simon Callow

The only thing I hated worse than cleaning my apartment was torture, though the two were a hairsbreadth away from neck-and-neck. I — Darynda Jones

Tidying is the act of confronting yourself; cleaning is the act of confronting nature — Marie Kondo

What the federal government should have done is accept the assistance of foreign countries, of entrepreneurial Americans who have had solution that they wanted presented ... The Dutch and the Norwegians, they are known for dikes and for cleaning up water and for dealing with spills. — Sarah Palin

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

Emma, you and your poetry, me and my acting--what are we trying to do? We can't top this city. We poor would-be artists can't compete with or improve on the rich density of human experience on any random, average, slow summer night in New York--who are we trying to kid? In the overheard conversation in the elevator, in the five minutes of talk the panhandler gives you before hitting you for the handout, in the brief give-and-take when you are going out and the cleaning lady is coming in--there are the real stories, incredible, heartbreaking and ridiculous, there are the command performances, the Great American Novels but forever unwritten, untoppable, and so beautifully unaware. — Wilton Barnhardt

B-b-but who will I have cleaning marathons with?"
"Casey. I'll be there in spirit."
"She's not neurotic and cranky like you."
"You'll miss that, ay?"
"Hell yes, I'll miss that! When you're obsessive and pissy, you tell those floors who's boss. They won't shine like that when Casey scrubs them. And don't get me started on our Covenant Series discussions. The girl thinks Alex should pick Seth. Seth, Em. How can I clean with someone who isn't Team Aiden? It's like ... madness. Madness on Earth. The fucking apocalypse - "
"Whitney," I chuckled, squeezing her tighter, "I assure you, you'll survive. The second she starts running her mouth about Aiden, just spray her with bleach. That'll teach her a lesson."
-Emma and Whitney — Rachael Wade

E is definitely the biggest ERROR my mother has ever made - worse than the time she designed a litter-box-cleaning robot that flung clumps of kitty poop all over the house. — James Patterson

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

No person who can read is ever successful at cleaning out an attic. — Ann Landers

I get the same buzz cleaning up the yard as Leo Tolstoy did from scything hay. — Sergei Lukyanenko

When he mentioned family, I could only think of my father, my real father, the Long Island janitor with the impenetrable accent and true-to-life smells. My mind returned away from what Joshie was saying and I pondered my father's humiliation. The humiliation of growing up a Jew in the Soviet Union, of cleaning piss-stained bathrooms in the States, of worshipping a country that would collapse as simply and inelegantly as the one he had abandoned. — Gary Shteyngart

Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? You are responsible for your inner space; nobody else is, just as you are responsible for the planet. As within, so without: If humans clear inner pollution, then they will also cease to create outer pollution. — Eckhart Tolle

There's a man upon that ledge, he's only cleaning windows. What a shame for the pain we're missing. Gonna lean back on my wall and pray for him to fall. — Pete Townshend

I've loved singing since forever. Whether it was with my sisters while cleaning the kitchen, putting shows on for my stuffed animals, writing songs about my stuffed animals, starting an a capella group with my cousins while on vacation, or awkwardly singing along to karaoke tracks alone in my bedroom - singing always found a way into my life. — Kina Grannis

Farm country
you know, hay, horses, cattle. It's the ideal situation for me. I like the physical endeavors that go with the farm
cutting hay, cleaning out stalls, or building a barn. You go do that and then come back to the writing. — Sam Shepard

I was sure I wanted to grow up to be either a veterinarian or a writer. In fact, I worked for a vet during high school, doing everything from cleaning cages to assisting in surgery. — K.A. Applegate

The truth doesn't lie. It's up in your face. It's in your conscience. It challenges your very being with the intention of cleaning you of sin and its influence. — Monica Johnson

When I made my Broadway debut, I was still cleaning houses, something I'd done since I went out on my own at 15. — Aida Turturro

I started at an agency called Intertalent. You copy scripts, you pick up people's dry cleaning, you take their dogs to the vet, you deliver packages, you do whatever they want you to do. — Patrick Whitesell

Organization is a masculine trait, cleanliness a feminine one. Cleanliness is next to godliness because manliness is godliness. — A.D. Aliwat

I sighed. Sometimes, killing people just wasn't worth cleaning up the mess afterward. — Jennifer Estep

I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I'd bet I wouldn't lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste. — Berkeley Breathed

We'd like to take a look at the adoptable dogs. Please."
"... if you have any thoughts of feeding the dogs, you leave that thought with me."
"This is serious. You can't feed them... You feed them something you think is no big deal ... like a Slim Jim or a Vienna Sausage, and we're cleaning up a shitstorm at two AM."
"Shitstorm," Mark said. " Is that the clinical term, Dr. Peterman?"
" We call it a code brown at the hospital. — Ann Wertz Garvin

The objective of cleaning is not just to clean, but to feel happiness living within that environment. — Marie Kondo

Though outwardly Kristina maintained that a clean room was a symptom of a diseased mind (for how could she, while studying the world's greatest thinkers, be bothered with such mundane earthly issues as cleaning?), inwardly she hated untidyness and made a point of spending as little time in the room as possible. — Paullina Simons

I'm not a potato sack; I've never sat on my couch. If I'm home, I'm cleaning, feeding my dogs, doing stuff. Life is too precious to waste time. — Gisele Bundchen

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

(Advice to cleaning women: Take everything that your lady gives you and say Thank you. You can leave it on the bus, in the crack.) — Lucia Berlin

Surrender means cleaning the window so light can enter. — Kamal Ravikant

The true face of the unions is not now a man in a hard hat as much as it is a woman in a classroom or in cleaning smocks. — Karen Nussbaum

George dutifully dusted the marks from the expensive rug and retired to the kitchen to await a grave and disapproving Collins, wishing with all of his boyish heart that he had applied for the stables. Cleaning stalls had to be beneficial exercise, and surely one must become accustomed to the smells...eventually. — Sarah Brazytis

I can't stop thinking about what Caroline said to Minna about death. It isn't an infection, she said. She might be right. Then again, we've nested in the walls like bacteria. We've taken over the house, its insulation and its plumbing - we've made it our own. Or maybe it's life that's the infection: a feverish dream, a hallucination of feelings. Death is purification, a cleaning, a cure. — Lauren Oliver

And it's beyond my energy to explain why I don't think that four-letter word that everyone's so obsessed over and that gets everyone into so much trouble and pretty much makes everyone behave like an ass can live in a place like this. Somewhere during dry cleaning, details, and missed meals, it flakes away and what you're left with is married people with a tolerable affinity for each other. That little four-letter word can exist only in poetry, or movies of 2 to 3 hours in length. Maybe in a mini-series.
This place of dull details and irksome obligations is a home only to other four-letter words, which are used much more frequently. — Kendare Blake

Dentistry is more impressive in town-what the rural man calls cleaning the teeth is called "prophylaxis" in New York. — E.B. White

Ildiko had been tempted more than a few times to cross her eyes and watch their reaction.
"Don't even think about it, wife. You'll notice half of them are sharpening or cleaning their weapons. All I need is for someone to inadvertently slice themselves open because you startled them. — Grace Draven

I've never had much luck with New Year's resolutions. Last year I only lasted three days before realizing I couldn't survive without junk food. And the year before that, when my sister and I promised not to argue anymore, we didn't even make it to the end of my dad's New Year's Eve party. I'll spare you the gory details, but fruit punch and guacamole were involved. So was dry cleaning. — James Ponti

Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters. — Robin McKinley

Well, PT Anderson sent me a script of Boogie Nights which I let lay around my house for about three months, then one day I'm cleaning my office and decided that I'd better read this before the guy calls me back. I never put it down, bro. — Luis Guzman

Bosch had left Nigeria with his infamous Butcher Boys - assorted sizes, shapes and colors, but all killers for a price - when his scheme to take over a native village backfired. He had figured on cleaning up by selling the village girls in the Congo but found himself dodging spears, knives and related items of cutlery instead. — Walter Kaylin

It's always been important for writers to be disciplined but now even more so. In addition to the traditional displacement activities like cleaning the fridge or eating cake writers are faced with a plethora of online possibilities (some of which may be professionally worthwhile as well as interesting and fun). As a writer it's important to learn how to focus so you can do both as and when you need to. — Sara Sheridan

...shades of OCD. — Susan Kaye Quinn

Most mothers entering the labor market outside the home are naive. They stagger home each evening, holding mail in their teeth, the cleaning over their arm, a lamb chop defrosting under each armpit, balancing two gallons of frozen milk between their knees, and expect one of the kids to get the door. — Erma Bombeck

I've learned that for hoarders, every cleanup is a grieving process. We are asking them to say goodbye to items that are heavy with memories - some wonderful, some painful. But all are important and deserve respect. A hoarder finds safety in the hoard, in the stacks and piles, and he or she will grieve over the loss of those items when they are gone. The week after the house cleaning is usually the worst. Instead of being happy and enjoying the new space, hoarders go through a difficult process. They miss their possessions, which were their closest friends for years. — Matt Paxton

There's times when I'm cleaning the kitchen, and while I'm doing that, I'm singing and air guitaring with a broom to 'You Should Be Dancing.' — Corey Taylor

It would be nice if life weren't so messy, but that's just not the nature of things; we want things to be perfect, but most of the time we just spend our existence cleaning up the messes we make - and sometimes the messes of other people, people about whom we care most in the world. — Craig Johnson

As long as you are forced to be a woman first instead of a person, by default, you need to be a feminist. That's it. Men are people, women are women? Screw that. Screw that. I am sick of having words aimed to shut me up. I am sick of having to be anything other than a person first. Zounds! I enjoy being a girl, whatever that means. For me, that meant Star Wars figurines, mounds of books, skirts and flats. It meant Civil War reenacting and best girlfriends I'd give a kidney to and best guy friends I'd ruin a liver with and making messes and cleaning up some of them and still not knowing how to apply eye shadow. That's being a girl. That's being a person. It's the same damn thing. I wish Rush had just called me an idiot. I'm happy to be called an idiot! On the day when someone on the Internet calls me an idiot first and ugly second, I will set down my feminist battle flag and heave a great sigh. Then I will pick it back up and keep climbing. There are many more mountains to overcome. — Alexandra Petri

My clothes are made of monosodium glutamate and hexachlorophene. My food is made of polyester, rayon and lurex. My rug lotions contain vitamins. Do my vitamins feature cleaning agents? I hope so. My brain is gimmicked by a microprocessor the size of a quark, and costing ten pee and running the whole deal. I am made of - junk, I'm just junk. — Martin Amis

Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, "Respect me; I'm a respectable grown-up!" and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death. — Wendy Wasserstein

Picture-perfect, state-of-the-art vaginas lengthened using sections of colon, self-cleaning and lubricated with its own mucosa. Sensate clitorises made by cropping and rerouting bits of the glans penis. The Cadillac of vaginoplasty. Some of these Cadillacs turn out so succesful that the flood of colon mucosa means wearing a maxipad every day. — Chuck Palahniuk

So you can look me in the eye and say that you are a president committed to cleaning up the environment? — Matt Lauer

It's not the nineteenth century; I'm not meant to be judged on how good a housekeeper I am. Getting down on the floor with a lemon and a bucket of vinegar does not make me a better person. — Emily Matchar

When he finished cleaning my open wounds, he found a jar of salve and began rubbing it into the rough parts of my skin. I sort of got lost in the feel of his hands massaging mine. — Richelle Mead

For the middle majority of us all, knowledge of Negroes firsthand is probably limited - limited to the colored cleaning woman, who comes twice a week, limited to the colored baseball player who saves or loses a home game, limited to the garage mechanic, or dime-store clerk, or blues singer seen and heard on a Saturday night. To this white majority, the black man is as unknown as once was the heart of the Dark Continent of Africa. — Irving Wallace

Why do I continue making movies? Making movies is better than cleaning toilets. — Klaus Kinski

Over the years I have learned that "cleaning up one's act" may be far less important than consecrating one's life. It may be possible to use everything. A ruthless man may be able to open doors that a more kindly and traditionally spiritual person could knock on forever. Without judgment, many things can be made holy. — Rachel Naomi Remen

It's no accident that most ads are pitched to people in their 20s and 30s. Not only are they so much cuter than their elders...but they are less likely to have gone through the transformative process of cleaning out their deceased parents' stuff. Once you go through that, you can never look at *your* stuff in the same way. You start to look at your stuff a little postmortemistically. If you've lived more than two decades as an adult consumer, you probably have quite the accumulation, even if you're not a hoarder...I'm not saying I never buy stuff, because I absolutely do. Maybe I'm less naive about the joys of accumulation. — Roz Chast

My mother got me into music when I was a little kid. She used to play music, blast it, when she was cleaning the house, while I was crawling around. I just love loud music. — Pauly D

Commercial cleaning operations that use carpet and upholstery cleaners include apartment buildings and condos, offices, schools, banks, restaurants, hotels, churches, bowling alleys, transportation terminals, and more. Cleaning services melbourne also a perfect cleaning company in melbourne. — Cleaning Services

I've always worked hard and played hard, and I'm sure I'll be cleaning up my act in the future. — Michael Douglas

I realize that the times I have known some sort of inner peace in my life, those have always been times when I focused on helping others more than myself ... babysitting, cooking dinner for my family, cleaning up the house, talking to a friend on the phone and just listening to them vent about something or other without offering an opinion or judging. Those have been the moments when I get to stop obsessing about myself and really feel a sense of liberation. 'Freedom from the bondage of self ... — Nic Sheff

When I went to a school in Japan, they told me that both the teachers and students perform cleaning tasks here to keep the schools clean. I wondered why can't we do it in India. — Narendra Modi

There is, in the Army, a little known but very important activity appropriately called Fatigue. Fatigue, in the Army, is the very necessary cleaning and repairing of the aftermath of living. Any man who has ever owned a gun has known Fatigue, when, after fifteen minutes in the woods and perhaps three shots at an elusive squirrel, he has gone home to spend three-quarters of an hour cleaning up his piece so that it will be ready next time he goes to the woods. Any woman who has ever cooked a luscious meal and ladled it out in plates upon the table has known Fatigue, when, after the glorious meal is eaten, she repairs to the kitchen to wash the congealed gravy from the plates and the slick grease from the cooking pots so they will be ready to be used this evening, dirtied, and so washed again. It is the knowledge of the unendingness and of the repetitious uselessness, the do it up so it can be done again, that makes Fatigue fatigue. — James Jones

According to Hugh Thomas, author of 'A History of the World', the greatest medical advance in history has been garbage collection. The greatest psychological advance in history is just around the corner and will also have to do with cleaning up. Cleaning up lies and "coming out of the closet" is getting more attention these days. Some day we will look back on these years of suffocation in bullsh*t in the same way we look back on all the years people lived in, and died from, their garbage. — Brad Blanton

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.

My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it. — Elizabeth Strout

A family of four needs to transport around 200 pounds of water each and every day to meet its most minimal drinking, cooking, and cleaning needs. To manage such an impossible weight, two trips to the well each day by mother and children are not uncommon. Carrying water for basic subsistence devours school time for children and places a dispiriting burden on the enterprising will of parents to struggle out of their material privation. That the water carrying falls traditionally on women adds the insult of gender inequity to the tragedy. — Steven Solomon

Liz pasted on a smile, trying to appear normal in light of the fact that he had possibly incriminating knowledge on her from the background check. She hoped her application for a marriage license with Craig wasn't in the report. Or her long shopping record for organization systems from The Container Store. Or her many Internet searches for breeds of nonshedding dogs (she was waiting for the house with a yard before getting one). Or her long-time obsession with new cleaning products. — Kylie Gilmore