6-minute read time.
Today’s piece is a personal essay about my experience with cleanliness. Please enjoy.
Stepping into the shower should feel relieving. Washing away a day’s worth of sweat, grime, and dirt is usually a pleasant, comforting experience. As the warm water washes over you, the smell of your shampoo fills your nostrils, and you massage your scalp and body with your hands and loofa, your body relaxes. For some, taking a shower is part of a self-care regimen, an essential step to wind down and wash away their stress.
It was never like this in a hoarded home.
My mother’s house had two full bathrooms, each equipped with a big beautiful tub and accompanying shower. When we first moved in, I was ecstatic. Before that house, our previous residence in Grafton only had one measly and grimy shower. Before that, there was only one in Leominster, kept clean by our mother’s obsessive-compulsive girlfriend, who monitored the length of our showers and amount of time in the bathroom. Our first home in Marlborough had two showers, one with a tub and one without, but we never used the standing shower because it had things on the floor. I was excited about the prospect of two working showers so my brother and I could get ready for school simultaneously without one of us having to get up earlier to claim ownership of the bathroom. Typically, I was the one who woke up 30 minutes before my brother, and I was looking forward to some more sleep in the morning.
As the years went by, and my mother’s hoarding filled the house, the first bathroom to go was the downstairs one, the lesser used of the two. The tub was filled with dirty pots and pans that wouldn’t fit in the overfilled kitchen sink two rooms over, awaiting a cleaning that never came. Then, random things were placed in the tub: boxes, clothes, and trash. The spiders of our house loved that shower, calling it their home and claiming the space with cobwebs like a toddler claiming a wall with drawings. When I cleaned up the house the few times I did, I hid things behind the curtain, hoping that whoever came over to visit wouldn’t be curious about what soaps we used and nosily draw it back to reveal the mess. The downstairs bathroom quickly became a half-bath, the shower completely inoperable.
We relied on the upstairs bathroom most of my time in that house. But that bathroom wasn’t perfect—actually, it was far from perfect. It was much smaller, and three people using a bathroom of that size is already challenging in an average household. With my mother’s condition, that bathroom became more than a bathroom. It became a dirty laundry bin, a kitchen sink, like the downstairs bathroom, and a trash can.
The sink became the place to balance dirty dishes and random goods. My mother acquired possessions in bulk, including soaps, but, at the same time, she hated waste. Whenever we ran out of hand soap, I asked her to open one of the new ones she got from Bath and Body Works. She had probably around 30 of them in her bedroom, waiting to be opened and used. Most of the time, she would say no, insisting that there was more soap in the old bottle, turning it upside down atop another to get any remaining drops out. Most times, whenever you had to use the sink, there was a bottle perched precariously in sight, and you had to avoid knocking it down.
Next to the sink was the toilet, which remained clean enough to sit on and use but filthy from years of needing chemical scrubbing. To avoid clogging the sink, my mother often poured food waste into the toilet, thinking flushing it was safer. Most times you opened the toilet seat, you would be met with Cheerios floating on the water, waiting to be flushed. The idea that food could be flushed easily quickly went out the window as each trip to the bathroom turned into a clogged toilet, regardless of how little toilet paper you used.
But the worst part of the bathroom was the shower. The shower, which was supposed to be the place you considered clean in order to properly clean yourself, was disgusting. Random brown stains painted the sides and floor. Pots, pans, plates, and silverware were pushed to the far end of the tub, leaving just enough room for one person to stand carefully under the showerhead. The shower liner, once clear, was stained a matching brown. Trash, like brown paper bags, found themselves amidst the dirty dishware. It was like showering in a field of landmines. Any wrong move, any misstep, an explosive would blow, and you would injure yourself from tripping on a plate.
If I remember correctly, there was a time I slipped on something. Or maybe tripped. I remember I had a large bruise on my lower back from injuring myself in the shower and hitting my back on the faucet, but it was so long ago that I can’t tell you exactly what happened.
Every time I stepped out of that shower, I felt dirty. It’s a horrible feeling, never feeling clean. My sense of cleanliness affects my self-confidence, so each time I showered, I felt weak and gross. Because of my perceived lack of hygiene, I was self-conscious of how I smelled and looked constantly. Every piece of clothing I wore had to be perfect and smell perfect. I would carefully sniff the armpits and crotch of each item I wore, even when they had just come out of the dryer, to ensure they met my standards. I would apply overly generous amounts of deodorant and perfume daily. If one of the pieces of clothing I wore had a faint wrong smell, I would even rub my deodorant stick on the inside of the garment, hoping that what I smelled was a figment of my imagination. After my trips to school in my mom’s car, which smelled like must and rot, I would immediately go to the bathroom to reapply large amounts of deodorant and perfume, spraying enough of the mist into the air that I was essentially showering in it. I would go through bottles of perfume in weeks.
To this day, my unusual habits and quirks have stuck with me. Now, I can’t take a shower without wearing shower shoes, even if it’s a shower I know is cleaned weekly and used only by my family members. I still apply large amounts of deodorant and perfume. I carry a stick and bottle with me wherever I go. I get comments from the people around me that I smell good, which secretly makes me sigh in relief. Whenever I get the rare joking comment from my brother or boyfriend that I smell bad after going to the gym or being out all day, my heart drops. My mother’s shower haunts me, reminding me I can never smell perfect or look clean enough.
