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.
The next day I told myself I wouldn’t do it. Then I told myself I would just do three tiles. After those three I figured a few more couldn’t hurt. That was half the kitchen. I told myself I had to stop. I told myself I could stop. But I think we all know I was whistling in the wind.
The third day I tried to ration myself. A dozen tiles, no more. But at 1 a.m. I realised I had finished the kitchen. I went to bed feeling itchy. The next day I surveyed the line where the nice beige grouting ended and the horrid brown grouting began. It was too much for me. I started to scrub the hall. I must have entered some sort of blissful, trance-like state because before I knew what was happening the hallway was gleaming and it was three hours later. Then things started to get really scary.
The next night, during a meal out with friends, I caught myself looking at my watch, hurrying the conversation along and wolfing down the haute cuisine in order to get home and get the toothbrush out.
The evening after that I was walking home from the Tube thinking, ‘Ooh! I can scrub the floor soon!’ When I got in, I dug out a box of chocolates and ate them as I scrubbed, as if tile-cleaning was like watching a rom-com.
Let me at this point reassure you, it’s not as if I have nothing at all in my life. But there is something about scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush that is filling a yawning chasm in me. It reaches the spots other obsessions just don’t reach. I don’t want to give it up. I don’t want to admit I’m powerless over toothbrushes, that my life has become unmanageable, that no human power could have relieved my scrubbing.
I want to keep doing it. I like it. I’m good at it. There’s a technique to it, you see. Like tooth-brushing, you don’t just scrub backwards and forwards. The slower you scrub the more you can get into those difficult corners. Sometimes you have to rotate the brush. I’m sorry, am I boring you?
The only problem I can foresee is the question of what I’m going to do when all my tiles are clean. So I rang a friend and offered to do her grouting. I told her I wasn’t fussy, it didn’t have to be flooring. Bathroom wall tiles would probably also hit the spot. She was delighted and said she would cook me dinner or even pay me, but I told her I really didn’t want anything in return. (Let’s face it, I would probably have paid her to let me do it if she’d hardballed.) Whereupon she congratulated me on discovering an addiction that contributes to society, pleases everybody, and does no one any harm. Purely as a precaution, however, if you see me in a dark alley, it’s probably best to run the other way.
Comments