I'm Retired! Now what?

April 13, 2026

Apparently, the favorite question to ask someone when they are about to retire is, “What are you going to do with all your time?”  When this question was thrown at me, my answer usually began with the simple words, “Do you mean AFTER I clean my house?”  During my nearly four-decade career I’ve run across a few dedicated souls who claim they just can’t go to work without a daily house clean.  When I hear such a claim, I nearly expect angelic wings to sprout from their back while a shining halo hovers over their heads.  However, if cleanliness is next to godliness, Margaret and I just might be the spawns of Satan!    As far as personal hygiene is concerned, I’ve been known to take three showers a day, but I’m pretty sure Margaret and I will never be winning any gold medals concerning the topic of keeping a clean house.

A few years ago I was watching the TV gameshow Family Feud and one of the questions during the lightening round was, “How many hours does it take to clean your entire house.”  One of the contestants blurted out, “Eight hours!” and the great Steve Harvey noted, “You’ve got a big house.”  When I heard that all I could think was, “Eight hours?!?!”  I couldn’t even complete a deep clean of my kitchen in eight hours!  What kind of clean freaks are these people?  Regardless how long a thorough clean of our kitchen would take, that room would have to wait.  To start out this full house, retirement, deep clean, I decided to go with the nastiest room in the house, and that of course was the bathroom. 

Margaret and I have two and a half bathrooms in our modest home, and to be honest, we rarely even use the master bathroom much anymore.  Although our big jacuzzi tub is pretty cool looking with its own little light fixture and all, I think it has only been used twice in the twenty-five years we’ve owned the place.  As for the big walk-in shower, it is so far from the hot water heater that a full ten minutes has to pass before the water is heated to a bearable temperature.  Therefore, our smaller bathroom with the tub shower has become our main bathroom or choice and therefore has become the nastiest one!

I don’t know how many times I had come home from work during the last few months expecting the bathroom’s doorway to be blocked off by hazard tape, and by the time I had retired I nearly expected the Environmental Protection Agency to show up and shut our bathroom down in the name of saving the planet!  Fortunately, no government agencies had to become involved, but the cleaning time was certainly overdue!

My wife and I generally fall into the contest regarding who can stand the dirty bathroom the longest, and the first one who wimps out and can no longer stand the filth loses and has to be the one who cleans it.  Growing up on a farm, I spent my younger days trudging through barnyards that were so thick in mud and cow manure that I lost my shoes more than a few times in the deep, barnyard muck.  With that in mind, I would say that I’m pretty hard to gross out.  However, I have to remember that my wife has gone through childbirth twice.  Yes, that’s a tough one to beat, which means I’m usually the one who finally breaks down and cleans that nasty bathroom!

For the epic battle of cleaning the bathroom I had cleared out the entire day, and since I’m now retired, I can do that…. everyday!  Back when we were both working, there was one day every two weeks when I had the house completely to myself.  On Wednesdays I didn’t have to go in for the night shift, and because Wednesday was Margaret’s swing day, she was toiling away at work every other Wednesday.  This meant that a couple of days out of the month I had the house to myself and therefore I cleaned!  More importantly, since I was the only one home, I could rock the house like a 1974 Led Zeplin concert while I cleaned!  Like many people I know, I always seem to work tedious jobs better when there’s a steady stream of hard core rock music rattling my walls!  So armed with my Windex and Lysol all-purpose cleaner I’d fill my five changer CD player full of Celtic punk rock, Bruce Springsteen, Kid Rock, or whatever I considered loud and proud for the day, and I’d crank up the tunes for a little housecleaning inspiration!  In most neighborhoods when people stroll by and hear tunes blaring, they probably think someone is having a party.  In my case, when the neighbors heard the sounds of AC/DC or Mötley Crüe blasting from my house they would merely say, “Sounds like Eddie is cleaning house today.”

For my money, the hardest part of cleaning the bathroom is the freaking cabinet countertop around the bathroom sink.  This is because Margaret has covered it with so much stuff that the very color of the countertop would be left a mystery to a clueless guest.  For years she has kept all these tubes and bottles of this, that, and other stuff crammed around the sink, most of which I have never known the purpose.  Apparently, neither does she because some of these tubes and bottles predates our marriage, but I dare not throw them away.  Oh heaven forbid!  I just wipe all the dust and talcum powder off of them and strategically put them back where they have been sitting for the last umpteen years!

When we first moved into this house, Margaret decided to bestow this bathroom with a nautical theme which means I always have to rinse off the two baskets of sea shells which are generally shoved behind the Johnson Baby Powder and Vaseline.   And then there is the blessed alligator head.  Yes, we have a small alligator head on the counter top of this bathroom.  Doesn’t everybody?  Actually, this is a souvenir of sorts that we picked up while in Shreveport, Louisiana twenty-six years ago, but the reason it has been considered part of the bathroom decor has remained a mystery to me for a quarter of a century.  Indeed, I dare not ask.  Instead, I just clean it because nobody wants to see an alligator head covered in baby powder.

Over the years I’d say I’ve gotten pretty decent at cleaning.  Before Margaret and I hooked up, I used to go out with a girl who had multiple jobs during the years I knew her.  For a while one of her occupations consisted of cleaning apartments after the old tenants had moved or using the professional term, end of tenancy cleaning.  So whenever I asked her to go to a concert with me her answer was simply, “Sure, if you come over and help me clean a couple apartments.”  It’s amazing what we guys will do for a little concert company.  Because of all of this preconcert cleaning I was subjected to, I can now proudly spray shower walls down with cleaner and scrub them squeaky clean with the best of them!

At one time, I used to pour myself a couple of shots of bourbon or tequila to get a decent buzz going while launching into my cleaning ritual.  With the added music, the booze made the whole experience a little like a concert!  After a while though, I discovered that I could get a pretty decent buzz going just from all the fumes I was breathing in from the multipurpose cleaner I was using to drench the shower tiles.  Who needs quality booze when you’ve got a good Lysol high kicking in.

In the twenty-six years Margaret and I have been married, the little woman has been able to find some kind of fault (whether it be major or minor) in pretty much everything I do.  However, I’ve never heard her complain once about the way I clean a bathroom.  In her mind, no critical comments equals the highest of praise imaginable.  I’m guessing that she’s just happy that she isn’t the one having to do the cleaning.  Now that the bathroom is clean, I suppose it’s time to move on to the next room!