5. You go to the hardware store and purchase some steel wool and some refinishing product with a name like “Can o’ Poison” that has skeleton heads all over it and a prominent Consumer Advisory like this:

WARNING—DO NOT LET THIS PRODUCT COME IN CONTACT WITH YOUR SKIN. DO NOT BREATHE THE FUMES. DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN AFTER USING THIS PRODUCT. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. DO NOT EVEN READ THIS WARNING.

6. You go home, put on some rubber gloves, and start scrubbing the paint with the toxic substance. It is hard work. It is dirty work. The gloves dissolve quickly, and it is clear that large patches of your skin will have to be surgically replaced. But it’s all worth it, because after just a few hours you have scraped away a small patch of that hideous orange paint, and underneath it you find ... a layer of hideous green Paint!

7. You repeat this process for two, maybe even three more layers of paint, and finally the truth dawns on you: This is not really a bureau. This is an enormous, bureau-shaped wad of paint.

8. You decide to hold a garage sale.

Interior Design Hints From Top “Pros”

To make a dark room look brighter, try turning on the electrical lights. A small carpet stain where the cat vomited in 1979 can be made to “disappear” when company comes by having a predetermined family member stand on it and refuse to move. Squares of corkboard stuck on the wall will often turn an “ordinary” room into

a room that smells like corkboard. If you’re planning to paint a room, remember that “oil-based” paint is the kind that is supposed to come off with paint thinner, but does not; whereas “latex” is the kind that is supposed to come off with simple soap and water, but does not.

Chapter 8. Good Housekeeping, Or Learning To Live With Filth

Hardly a week goes by when you don’t read a newspaper article like this:

LOS REDUNDOS, N.M.—Astronomers at the Institute for Wearing White Laboratory Coats here announced today that they have discovered a humongous dust cloud 237 skillion light-years from the earth. “This,” the scientists stated in unison, “could very well be the largest dust cloud we have discovered since the one we discovered last week, and we believe that it may provide us with valuable insights into the mystery of how we can obtain additional federal grants.”

What scientists are learning, through these dramatic breakthrough discoveries, is something that many of us have suspected for a long time, namely that the universe is made up almost entirely of dirt. More and more, scientists are suspecting that the Big Bang was in fact the explosion of a small but very densely packed vacuum cleaner bag.

So we must accept the fact that we live in a universe swarming with particles of filth that are ceaselessly trying to get into our homes and inflict themselves upon us, similar to insurance salespersons, but in some cases even more distasteful. Hard to believe? I thought so, too, until a short while back, when the people who publish the Allergy Relief Newsletter were thoughtful enough to send me, at their own expense, a piece of junk mail stating that my entire household was teeming with tiny dirt creatures named “dust mites,” which sound like harmless and friendly commercially licensed characters such as might have their own Saturday morning cartoon show sponsored by the sugar industry, until you look at the photograph showing a dust mite enlarged several thousand times, and it looks exactly like the kind of hostile giant mutant insect that was always destroying Tokyo in those movies that the Japanese used to make before they figured out how to do cars. According to the folks at the Allergy Relief Newsletter, these dust mites are swarming everywhere, including inside your nose, millions of them per nostril. And although they are, fortunately, a peaceful species, not generally known to attack humans except during mating season, we need to be aware of them, because they serve as a constant nasal reminder of our central point, which, as best we can remember, is: There is a lot of dirt around.

What this means is that you, as a homeowner, have to make a decision: Are you going to let the dirt overcome you, so that you live your life encrusted by a permanent layer of greasy yellowish filth, so that you are no better than slugs writhing in their own putrid slime? Or are you going to make the commitment, in time, in effort, to fighting back—to really trying to keep your new home neat and tidy?

I have tried it both ways, and trust me, the writhing slug approach is better. You don’t think important people, such as members of the U.S. Supreme Court, waste time cleaning, do you? Of course not! Their homes are filthy. They are filthy. That’s why they wear those robes: they have whole tribes of dust mites under there. Because they have learned, like so many other people, that if you really, seriously try to keep your house clean, you gradually turn into one of those TV commercial housewives who are always frowning with grave concern at their bathroom bowls and having conversations like this with their friends:

FIRST HOUSEWIFE: Whatever is the matter, Sue?

SECOND HOUSEWIFE: Oh, Betty, I am so very upset because Waxy Yellow Buildup has caused my kitchen floor to look like some kind of gigantic nasal discharge!

FIRST HOUSEWIFE: Lordy yes, it does.

SECOND HOUSEWIFE: And Bob is bringing home the archbishop tonight!! Whatever shall I do?

FIRST HOUSEWIFE: If it was me, I would take a major credit card and fly to the Caribbean island of Antigua and drink for days with strange men.

SECOND HOUSEWIFE: That is what I was thinking.

So we see that it can lead to bad things, this obsession some people have with housecleaning. What you want to do, in your household, is adopt the cleaning system my wife and I use, which is based on the old philosophical question: “If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it, does it make any sound?” (The answer, by the way, is yes; the tree goes: “Moo.”) Our theory is, if there is nobody besides ourselves around to see the dirt, then the dirt isn’t really there. So Rule Number One of successful housecleaning is:

> Never Let Anybody into Your House <

Not even your mother. Especially not your mother. I cannot overemphasize the importance of this rule. Even if you know some really nice people who have had you over to their house thirty-seven times for dinner, you must not weaken and invite them to your house. You must give them plausible excuses, such as: “We sincerely intend to have you folks over one of these days, but right now we’re all in a dither because our housekeeper has been killed by radon gas.”

Rule Number Two of successful housecleaning, of course, is:

> Never Have Children of Any Kind <

Each of us, as a human being, has an important choice to make: We can either experience the trials, the joys, the tragedies, and the triumphs of that most sacred of human institutions, parenthood; or we can have a house where we do not regularly find gerbil poop in our sofa. But we cannot have both of these things. Because small children have no concept whatsoever of cleanliness. A small child’s concept of housekeeping is to lick spilled pudding off the living room carpet. And it does not get better as they get older. For example, my son, now age seven, is in the phase where he likes to play with educational “construction” toys, designed by escaped Nazis, that consist of 363,000,000,000,000 tiny plastic pieces in a box. The way you play with these toys is, you strew the pieces all over the living room floor, and then you go outside to play. And when your mother yells: “Robert! Come in here and pick up your construction set!” you yell back: “I’m still using them!” And then late that night, you lie awake in bed, waiting for the moment when your father, heading for the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice, wanders out into the darkened living room and steps, barefooted, on the plastic pieces, which is the cue for him to perform the comically entertaining Midnight Dance of the Bozo Father, a rapid series of hopping, skating movements across the floor accompanied by whimpering, followed by very bad words. This is a good time for you to look like you are Sound Asleep.