I have been cleaning house for two days now. A lot of what Marion and I do together at both houses falls into the category of work more than fun. We do yard work together. We paint rooms together. We do fix and repairs jobs together. We wash windows together.

But when it comes right down to the basics, she takes care of hers and I take care of mine.

She is good at the basics. She is disciplined at the day to day chores that keep a house in order. She will out-sweep and out-mop me 5:1 over any given month. Maybe 10:1. And because I know this, when I know she’s coming down to my house for a few days, I get busy.

This is one of those times.

The first order of business is the back porch. This porch is my favorite “room” in the house. It sits idle for most of the winter. When there’s a warm day in February, I might venture out there. Otherwise I leave it untouched. Then when the pollen storm hits, I cover everything I can with old sheets and stay out.

I have learned this about cleaning up after the pollen season. It’s like washing a vehicle. I start at the top and work my way down. Yellow dust covers everything. No sense in sweeping the floor until I knock down the yellow spider webs out of the corners at the ceiling.

I’m up on an 8 foot stepladder to get all the high spots. The backside of my rock chimney is on the porch. Every crack and crevice is covered in dust. I have in my hand a broom handle with a scrub brush duct-taped to the end in order to reach the very top. I am holding on for dear life.

I can’t remember the last time I tried to clean the chimney. Maybe never. The very top is in the shadows above any lights in the room. Apparently, an entire global colony of spiders has been living up here for the last several years completely undetected.

Marion has radar vision when it comes to spider webs. She sees them in restaurants. She notices them in the crack between the fridge and the wall. Last week, while she was lying in a hospital bed, groggy and in pain, she says to me, “Look at that spider web.”

Outside the window, 150 feet away on the corner of the other wing of the hospital, was one strand of a spider web glistening in the sun.

One time we were sitting on the couch on my porch.

“You plan on keeping that spider web?” she asks.

I am clueless. “What spider web?”

“The one covering the lamp shade right next to you.”

In spite of my tolerance for all things dusty and dirty, I am giving this porch my best shot. I dust the walls. I sweep and dust the screens and ledges beneath them. I carefully remove all the sheets and take them outside to flap them in the breeze. I make sure to be downwind of the house as the yellow cloud from the sheets drifts off into the woods.

Next comes the floor. I am dreading this part because I know from experience that pollen does not sweep efficiently. No matter how fine the bristles on the broom, small trails of yellow streaks are left behind. Sweep too hard, and a secondary dust storm erupts, covering everything I just dusted. Sweep too gingerly, and the pollen rolls out from under the broom.

I tackle the floor in two phases, moving all the furniture to one side where I can get to half of the room. Broom. Dustpan. Bucket. When I finish round one, I get down on my hands and knees with a horsehair bristled paint brush. 4” wide. Sweeping behind the broom with a paint brush makes me feel like Little Orphan Annie scrubbing floors at the orphanage. But I am determined.

With half the floor swept as good as I can get it, I fill the mop bucket with water. My tools are simple. A sponge mop with a squeeze handle. A bottle of Orange Glo floor cleaner and revitalizer.

Within the first five minutes I’m sweating like a pig, which by the way is a terrible metaphor because pigs don’t sweat. But my shirt is wet. My back is aching.

My phone rings. It’s Marion.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“I’m mopping the floor, and it’s about to kill me.”

I wasn’t hoping for applause. I wasn’t expecting an at-a-boy. A little encouragement would have been nice.

“Pshaw. I vacuum, sweep, and mop three houses a day. You ain’t telling me nothing.”

“I appreciate the sympathy.”

All total it took me about 4 hours to clean the back porch. No spiders in the corners. No dust on the table. The floor felt cool and clean on my bare feet when I went out there this morning to drink my coffee and sit for a spell.

I wish I was a better housekeeper. I’m always willing to pitch in and help, but I’m not much of a starter when it comes to getting into the grind of cleaning. I tend to let things pile up a bit.

Like laundry.

You wouldn’t think that one guy would produce enough dirty laundry to cause much of a backup in the clothes basket. I wear the same pair of jeans for days at the time. A stain on the front of my shirt. No problem. I’m not going anywhere.

I have three baskets. One for the clothes I wear. One for the towels I use. And in the laundry room, one for the stuff that’s not pressing, like dish rags, tablecloths, and bed sheets. Clothes and towels, I usually keep up with. It’s that third basket that literally piles up.

So, while cleaning the porch I’ve got the washer and dryer running in tandem, back to back cycles. It is now 24 hours after I finished the porch, and the washing machine is on its tenth load since yesterday. Every stitch of my jeans and shirts are put away. Every towel is folded and in the cabinet. The pollen coated sheets are clean. My winter flannel sheets are folded. Two bedspreads. Two sets of curtains. The tablecloths will be in the dryer soon.

I have to admit that a clean house makes a man feel good about himself. I’ve worked hard enough that I’m looking forward to chopping wood and mowing grass. And I guarantee you, I’ll never be the dumb guy who makes fun of anyone who keeps a clean house. It’s a workout.

Finally, I’m taking a break waiting on the beep from the dryer. I’m sitting on the couch. My feet propped up. A cold glass of ice water is trickling down the back of my parched throat. I lay my head back to close my eyes for a moment of peace and rest.

That’s when I see it. The top of the fan blades overhead are covered in dust bunnies the size of small woodland creatures.

Good Lord, the work never ends.