Spring is approaching and I’m starting to think more about spring cleaning and getting the house in order.  When I first started working at Clorox, it was strange to think that I would be dedicating years of my life to marketing cleaning products.  I mean, cleaning products aren’t exactly glamorous and cleaning isn’t exactly dinner party conversation.

Or so I thought…

As I’ve spent more time at Clorox, and as I learned more about not only cleaning products, but how and why people cleaned, I discovered that cleaning could actually be a pretty emotionally-charged topic: people either love it, hate it or just put up with it.

Take my friend, Lena, for example.  She loves to clean.  You’ve heard of Extreme Sports?  (You know, those hard core activities where some guy’s riding a dolphin or popping wheelies on his mountain bike while riding up a half pike?) Well, consider Lena an "Extreme Cleaner".  When she cleans, she means business.  She’s not content with the casual glide of the sponge across her counter.  Nope, she gets down on her hands and knees and scrubs that tub, floor or counter until it meets her standard of clean. She takes no shortcuts and she’s the one I call when I need to know exactly what cleaner to use on what surface to make it shine. And she doesn’t only do this when she has guests coming over—she does it because she gains a tremendous sense of personal pride and accomplishment from keeping her home clean.

Then there’s my husband.  Let’s call him a “Cleaning Avoider” because he would rather get a root canal without anesthesia than clean the tub.  And I don’t mean to say that he’s lazy, because he certainly does his share of house-related chores including most of the cooking, but this guy really hates to clean. Now, I don’t expect him to relish mopping or doing the laundry, but when my husband does clean, you’d think that I’ve just asked him to sever his left arm or that I’ve made him go beat our family’s clothes against a rock by a stream or something.  He really despises it!

Then there are folks like me. I wouldn’t say that I like to clean but since I’ve become a Mom, cleaning has become much more important to me than I ever thought.  I clean more often, with more care and for more reasons.  Besides the fact that we now have more little mess-makers in the house, I’m anxious to keep germs in their place (ie: dead on my paper towel). So you could call me a "Germ Zapper."  Now I admit that this germ-a-phobia sometimes taints my world view: my hubby looks at a raw chicken on the cutting board and envisions how he’ll turn that into a savory roasted dinner; I look at the raw chicken and see it as a potential harbinger of salmonella.

So maybe I get a little neurotic but keeping my home clean really does help me feel like I’m keeping my family healthy.  I don’t love to do it, but I do it!

What kind of cleaner are you?