The White Glove Test

One of the things I love about working from home is that there is no commute to and from an office. Another perk is that I can have office hours in my pajamas. One of the drawbacks of the arrangement, though, is that it's not good enough for me to have a clean teaching studio...I also have to have a clean kitchen, bathroom, and dining room. "Why, pray tell?" you ask. Because I never know when a student will need to use the restroom, a parent will want to sit in on a lesson, or someone will wander about for some reason. And if any wandering at all is done, the dining room, kitchen, and powder room are sure to be seen.

Which brings me to tonight. It's Friday, we've just finished a delicious family dinner along with a Netflix viewing, and I'd like to tidy up the kitchen, well, tomorrow morning...or afternoon... Tomorrow's Saturday, after all! But, there's one little problem. I teach piano on Saturday mornings. As much as I'd like to leave the dishes piled up temporarily, I mustn't. My wonderful husband does all of the cooking at our house, so the dishes are my domestic responsibility. Our sons occasionally help out with kitchen duty as well, so I'm not complaining.

This brings to mind a few cleanliness horror stories. Shall I share them with you? Yes I shall.

• Once, a student's mother came into the house to use the restroom during her child's lesson. Shortly after she closed the bathroom door, I heard a little shriek. Then I remembered. Just before piano started, I found that red melted candle wax had spilled into the toilet. I only had time to do a quick clean-up job before lessons started, so the mother probably saw whatever I missed in my haste, and assumed it was an organic blob of some sort.
  
• Several years ago, when we had a miniature dachshund, I happened to glance around the piano room during lessons and see an odd shape under the coffee table. Luckily the student I was teaching was looking at his music, and didn't notice when I retrieved the object. Let's just say I was mortified to find that it was an unmentionable my darling little pup had retrieved from the bathroom wastebasket.
• Similar story from a colleague with a golden retriever: Her dog had (and has) a habit of bringing dirty laundry into the piano room - usually socks and underwear, which she deposits at the feet of students.
• When I was in college full-time, and had much less time for domestic chores than I do now (which is not much), I had a student who had an unusually uptight attitude about dust. She could not keep herself from giving my pianos the white glove test at each and every lesson. Since her lesson was in the middle of the week (which was roughly three days after I did my weekly dusting . . . that is, if I had found any time to do weekly dusting), she could always swipe up a nice bit of dust. Eventually I learned to keep a Swiffer hidden inside the piano bench to whip out and use for touch-ups just before said student arrived. Things were great until she started examining tables and window sills.

You get the idea. If there is a truism in my home work environment, it's that a student (probably an adult student) will desperately need to use the bathroom if the toilet has gone without a scrub, and a parent's cell phone will automatically go dead and send him directly into my kitchen to use the land line if there are dishes piled in the sink. If these rooms are sparkling clean, no such needs will occur. It's just plain science. Dirt is a magnet to those whom you would like least to see it.

So, I'm off to store leftovers, run the dishwasher, clean the counters, and sweep the floor. That'll keep 'em in the piano room!