Disney gave me unrealistic expectations about common household implements

Flora—Good gracious! Who left the mop running?
Merryweather—Stop, mop! [mop stops immediately]

--Sleeping Beauty, 1958


Don’t even pretend you don’t understand what I’m talking about. I saw a piece of Flair on Facebook the other day that said something like “Disney gave me unrealistic ideas about boyfriends” and another that said “Disney gave me unrealistic expectations for hair,” and, thinking about it, I never expected my hair to be perfect or to have a serenading, I’ll-rescue-you-my-dear-distressed-damsel boyfriend, even when I was little (I cut my own bangs and wanted my own sword, as long as it was elegant and princess-like—think Arwen, here). However, I did attribute a certain amount of glamour to household chores.

Think about it. All the older Disney princesses—they have the time of their lives every time they pick up a bucket and a rag. They’re always singing while they clean; have you noticed that? Snow White and “Whistle While You Work,” of course, plus the wooden shoes and rags part at the beginning. Cinderella cleans throughout the whole darn movie, and has that especially lovely sequence with the multicolored bubbles and the nightingale song and the sparkling water on the pearlescent tiles. Sleeping Beauty...well, I guess Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather do most of the cleaning in the movie itself—magically, to boot—but it’s pretty obvious that Aurora wields the broom in that clan when she’s not been sent out berry-picking, because those darling fairies-in-hiding have no idea of how to manage sensibly in household matters without magic (makes me wonder how they managed when she was a small child...). Belle cleans up after Gaston and her father and feeds the chickens and all. And Enchanted has “The Happy Working Song.” Which, incidentally, just might be my least favorite part of that movie.

Anyway, I remember watching them clean. Beautiful. So graceful and elegant. Everything glistened at the slightest touch of their hands, and they made everything look like so much fun. The singing, the waltzing with the broom, the simple ease and loveliness of it all. Cleanliness is next to godliness and princessness. It was like an extra checkmark on the list of princess-esque attributes. (Beautiful...check. Lovely singing voice...check. Kind heart...check. Good dancer...check. Impeccable housekeeper...check. Okay, now we’re good!) And the cleaning tools themselves were so charming and lovely. The mops and broom literally danced. They swirled around the room, swiftly nudging neat little mounds of dirt into the dustpan. The mop water stayed clean, and the mop wrung itself out, twisting itself like a spring then fluffling back to the familiar, swirlable, teardroppish shape favored by animation artists. The mop curled at the end.

I even have positive memories of my mother mopping when I was little, although these don’t involve the pleasures of cleaning themselves as much as they involve the kitchen chairs and the twisty barstool being piled in the living room, in ideal position for fort-building.

Real cleaning is approximately nothing like that.

I have discovered this within the past few weeks. This summer I got a job at a little bagel shop/deli/restaurant. Three days a week: Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday. (Not the perfect schedule, frankly, but I shan’t go into that right now.) I run the register and do everything but food preparation, which leaves me with a fairly tremendous workload. We close at three, and then I have to close, which means cleaning tables, putting up chairs, locking the door, sometimes doing the money, counting the tips, emptying the trash, washing any extra dishes, sweeping, and mopping. I don’t enjoy any of it, but sweeping and mopping are the worst. Mostly, this is because of the floor: square foot tiles with grouting that positively attracts crumbs. We’re talking a lot of tiles here. With tables and chairs on top.

It is an utterly unlovable floor, and it causes me to spend inordinate amounts of time thinking…ah…less than charitable thoughts about the owners, people I’ve known for many years, who are decent, adventurous, fun, reasonable people aside from WHAT POSSESSED THEM TO PUT IN THAT DETESTABLE FLOOR? Ahem. Sorry.

Being a place that serves sandwiches, bagels, chips, etc., there are always a lot of crumbs at closing. Often, they’re soggy. Whether they are or not, they get stuck in the grouting and I have to jab with the broom to loosen and capture them. I’m beginning to develop a rule that says if a single crumb is taking me more than fifteen seconds, I just leave it there and move on to the next seven million. (Give me a break. By this time, I’ve been there eight hours, and I want to go home.) Crumb-capture is not as easy as Disney makes it look.

After sweeping, I have mopping to look forward to. So, I go to the back and drag out of the waterhose place a disgusting grimy, yellow plastic bucket with wheels, the accompanying squeezer thing, and the very heavy, biceps-developing mop. We have a lighter one, but it’s always somewhere inaccessible on the days I work. I fill up the bucket with hot water, glug in lots of pink, Lysol-smelling soap, attach the squeezer, dunk in the mop, and then I put all my weight into shoving the bucket (which weights about as much as me) out of the back room, through the swing doors (they often hit me in the head as I do this), and out to the front. The wheels on the bucket don’t like the grooves in the tile any better than do I; they tend to skitter and try to follow imaginary tracks every way inconvenient, so it takes extra effort to unsloshingly, finally roll the bucket in front of the drink cases. Then, I mop. As I awkwardly wring excess water out of the mop with the squeezer, I feel like groaning. People pass by outside and watch me slap the mop on the floor and swash it around. Then back up and swash some more. Sometimes the metal head of the mop raspingly scrapes the floor. If they’re still watching me, this is the point at which I stop smiling and start gritting my teeth. “I’ve been a brilliant student my entire life and this is just a part-time job for spending money!” I want to shout at them. Of course, doing this would be bad business, so I simply grit and mop. I can cover about a quarter of floor before I have to rinse the mop, and it occurs to me that I am merely swishing gray water across the floor by the time I’ve dipped the mop in once; however, it is hot gray water, making the floor steam in a completely hellish manner. That must count for something. I swash some more. It does hurt my arms, but, you know, I can deal with that. The lighter mop also doesn’t cover as much ground in one swish, due to fewer swishy, slimy tentacles. It wouldn’t be so bad if I just knew the floor would stay clean for a while. But no. It won’t. So I slip all over that horrible wet tile (tennis shoes do not provide as much traction as they’re supposed to), dragging that ugly bucket, which frequently sloshes over and wets my legs. Did I mention how much I dislike mopping yet? Yeah. Sodden crumbs and gross, hot, dirty water. I dip again and churn the mop around a little in the tub—makes me feel either like a cauldron-bound witch or a grim pioneer woman fruitlessly churning, churning, churning…finally, when the entire floor is sufficiently wet and my arms and thoughts are burning (grumble grumble grumble tourists grumble crumbs grumble could HELP me you know grumble grumble), slip all everywhere while pushing the bucket back through the shop and the swinging doors (thwack. ouch.), and back to the hose area, where I heave the bucket over the tub lip, dump it out, put it upside-down, put the squeezer on top, and hook the mop up top. It often showers me with gray speckles of wetness during this step. Then, I leave.

See? There is nothing glamorous about that. Nothing. No twirly stuff, no loveliness, no singing. Yuckiness, yes. Glamour, no.

How could you give me these ruinable impressions, Disney? Gosh, that hurt, to have that one destroyed. Sigh. Oh, well.