Baseboards will sure keep you busy
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- January 7, 2025
- 166
Taller Half was sole keeper of hearth and home while I was away on a trip with my cousin. He took his duties seriously, making every effort to keep our house in a healthy, happy condition.
During that time, he made a remarkable discovery — our house had baseboards in
every single room.
Every primary caretaker of a house is acquainted with baseboards. They are technically trim to finish out the look of the wall between drywall and the floor, but they’re really “bumper guards” for walls and do double-duty as dust catchers. Every house can accurately judge its caregiver’s dedication to proper care by the state of the baseboards.
Dusty baseboards denote an oversight; dirty baseboards signal a total lack of commitment by the caregiver. A house with the latter is considered in dire danger of the dreaded “dustwebs-in-corners” syndrome. (This condition usually manifests itself with the arrival of visitors.)
Shocked as he was by his discovery of the existence of these dust-catchers, Taller Half rose to the occasion. He did not want to appear lacking in basic house care, so on his hands and knees, he set out to scrub every baseboard in the house.
This is not as easy as it sounds. Baseboards have the irritating habit of hiding behind large, solid pieces of furniture. Under the cover of a couch, for instance, the typical baseboard can accumulate an impressive amount of grime. Only by moving furniture can these insidious traps be exposed and cleaned.
Of course, moving furniture in a house is always a risky business. Dust bunnies are known to inhabit the undersides of sedentary sofas and beds. There also can be found vagrant socks, chewed pencils, paper clip colonies and a variety of less easily identifiable items.
Once, years ago, we found a complete lizard skeleton under a daughter’s bed. We gave it a decent burial and asked no questions.
When I returned home from my trip, I found Taller Half exhausted, the house clean and every piece of furniture a foot away from the walls. When I asked him what was going on, he muttered something about “keeping the baseboards under surveillance.” I found that
hilarious, but I didn’t say a thing, completely fine with relinquishing my baseboard duties.