She gets on air and refers to your hard day and how you deserve a great home cooked meal with no cleanup afterward.

“Of course that’s not going to happen!” she says. Then she lost me and I still don’t know what she was selling.

I was too busy doing the math as she spoke, filled with realization.

You wear clothes to play and have a great time and you expect laundry.

Dress your beautiful baby and bring her out to grow like a weed: expect laundry and messes.

Drive your car and you  expect to wash it after a few hundred miles.

The woman on the radio pointed out the obvious and suddenly I got it!

I knew that there is a lot of “waste”  (so called) in the maintenance of human beings because we use materials and energy to learn, we wear things out, and we enjoy excess – particularly with  treats. Long ago I dismissed much of that as being  non waste. Instead, I just put most of it in the category I call, “what it takes to get the job done”.  There is such a thing as squandering and it’s awful,  but that isn’t what I’m thinking of.

As much as I love the music of the early Moody Blues, I still wince in disagreement at the lyrics in a song where the warbler opines that, “we’re taking up a lot of room”, as if people are just another  animal and are abusing our space by commanding more than our share. Utter nonsense.

The reason none of that normal consumption in the maintenance of humans for comfort, health, and safety is waste in my estimation is that it helps satisfy the primary design objective of the planet in the first place: to give people a place to thrive. It’s no more a waste than the sweet conversation among friends is  wasted words.

This should make some things easier to endure because they’ll make better sense. Just about everything we do is followed by cleanup or repair or replacement of stuff connected with that event. We clean after meal, sweep the floor after a haircut, put a bandaid on the gardening blister, etc..

Close relations benefit from some parallel consideration. Maybe that’s why bed time talk and dinner chatter and one on one ‘quality time’ are so important. It’s why we cut each other slack when misunderstandings arise. We talk and even if it turns out that someone got their feelings hurt it’s going to be okay because the tear can be mended or the offence can be straightened out, maybe even before it leaves a stain.

There are some who enjoy housework, with the rythms of folding and patching and putting away. They can get lost in it while they sort through thoughts.

Not everyone does. But a dish not washed is a dish not wanted. Clothes washed are clothes available to be enjoyed. Relationships kept up are love kept fresh. If everything else requires care and upkeep, then why not relations too?

That advertisement reminded me that even something as common as mealtime  requires setup then cleanup. Getting upset at the dishes doesn’t wash them. Instinctively, I know that faulting crabby people just makes them worse. Now I know why. They might need some warm attention. They might need to be left to dry. They might need a hug or a listening ear. We accept that pots and pans need scrubbed, but bark at each other to snap out of a funk. Then there is pouting and grudges.

Who ever heard of forgiving a dirty plate? Just clean it up before everything dries hard and go on to the next thing. This is another place where children take the lead and set the example. You may have been a grump yesterday, but the little child takes you for what you are. If you behave better, they just like you more.

I don’t like dishes to stack up. Too messy. I like “clean”. We all like clean.

Next time I hear the ad, I’ll listen closer and see what she was selling even though I already bought!