Keeping House

Right now is the perfect time to give housekeeping personnel their long awaited due by voicing our respect and gratitude. Our current circumstances are challenging us to think twice about the people, things, and freedoms we take for granted. Housekeepers are quiet servants in our midst that have been systematically and abysmally underappreciated for far too long. 

Let's be honest. Very few of us are willing to do this day in and day out job. It has little to do with the small wage attached to the position, and more to do with the kind of work that needs to be done. Just stop for a moment, and think about what cleaning up after people involves. If you care for others who are unable to care for themselves, or you are hired to clean up in the private sector, you may have some understanding of what this entails. However, cleaning up after patients and the public, is an entirely different beast to be understood. 

Given the COVID pandemic, it may be most important to first highlight the people who clean and prepare the rooms and spaces in healthcare. If you work in, or visit a hospital or clinic, you should know that all floors, walls, furniture and equipment, and to different degrees, repeatedly receive a transfer of pathogens, organisms that have the potential to transmit disease. For obvious reasons, the quality of cleaning matters greatly and the task at hand expects following stringent protocols and great attention to detail. 

People assigned with cleaning these environments receive special training and are exposed, to greater and varying degrees, to certain health risks. We need to view housekeeping personnel in healthcare as professionals, and provide them equal respect, as they are essential and valuable to a team's effort to provide a safe and clean environment. 

Separately, we should also turn our attention to those who clean in the public and private sectors, and many who routinely see the worst of what the human masses, and sometimes mother nature, leaves in their wake. You would shudder to hear their stories. 

Naturally, it becomes a worthy reflection and a troubling one for any of us who have historically and routinely turned a blind eye and silently passed these cleaning warriors.  

Bottom line, do all you can to show them appreciation and do it more often. That's the short of it. 

​Mother Nightingale