Life Without Broom
I have often been in a position to decide if it’s worth to get a broom, or even a vacuum cleaner to pick up detritus from the floor, detritus being defined, in Wiki, as particulate matter of either organic or inorganic origin. In its appearance among others accumulated on the floor, each particle has lost its provenance, which might go back to a sandwich I ate three days before, or a speck of the wall paint chipped off when the wall was struck by a pot being placed in the cabinet, or to a large but innumerable set of plausible accidents that all have in common that they produce a particle of a size well below the size of a pea — yet a particle, nevertheless, that is visible to the naked eye and even has recognizable attributes such as shape and color. Its constituents being without discernable or traceable provenance, detritus is denigrated in the minds of many to dirt.
Once the label “dirt” is attached to particulate matter, disgust ensues in the minds of many people, a sensation that will not rest until the matter is removed. The disgust stems from the absence of information about provenance, and hence the existence of the possibility that any of the particles might contain infectious agents, decomposing organic matter, or even parts of taboo substances such as feces carried into the home on shoes.
The decision whether to get a broom or even its more powerful sister, the vacuum cleaner, should be made on the basis of the number of individual particles in the swatch of detritus that one must deal with. It is easy to pick up ten particles just by consecutively wetting ten fingers by tongue without having to lick any one twice. But even when the number exceeds ten, it is possible to herd the particles into a dense cluster, and pick them up en mass with a single swoop.
I kind of like the idea of cleaning without tools — it is a step back into more wholesome, organic life. Also, without brooms, there won’t be any witches, or at least they will think twice before settling down at a place without the means for basic transportation.
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