Real life | 4 December 2010

I once met a woman who claimed to have been incarcerated in an addiction unit because her family found her scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush. She said cleaning had become a mental and emotional obsession and that the amount and regularity of her scrubbing binges meant she had to admit she had hit rock-bottom.

I remember thinking at the time, ‘Yep, this woman is stir fry. No one who cleans the floor with a toothbrush is in what could be described as a good place. Nor are they, in all probability, safe to walk the streets. You wouldn’t want to meet such a person in a dark alley.’ At least, that’s what I thought. Until it crept up on me. One minute I was watching Strictly like a normal person, the next minute I was on my hands and knees on the floor of my kitchen, with a tray of cleaning fluids in front of me. A bowl of white wine vinegar appeared to be sitting in the middle of the tray, and clasped firmly in my right hand was an old toothbrush.

It seems I was scrubbing the grouting of the Italian slate tiles trying to get it from a murky brown colour to its original beige. As soon as I realised what I was doing, my survival instincts kicked in. ‘Put the toothbrush down. Move away from the vinegar,’ I told myself firmly. I was sure that with careful handling I could talk myself down from this high-wire situation.

But it was already too late. I had scrubbed the grouting around six tiles and I was hooked. The thing had me in its grip. I did about a quarter of the kitchen floor that night then collapsed into bed, feeling strangely sated.