All Hallows Eve
'Tis the night - the nightOf the grave's delight,

And the warlocks are at their play;

Ye think that withoutThe wild winds shout,

But no, it is they - it is they.

~Arthur Cleveland Coxe

It’s hard to say when it came to me, but it haunts me day and night, and not just on Halloween. I know that it’s not the spirits that reflect their apparitions onto our windows, the ghouls that trespass beneath our stairs, the wisps of ghosts that spin through our kitchen, the poltergeists that caress the afterlife in our coat closet, or even the multitude of phantoms that possess our pantry. I actually love living in a haunted house. Oh, but for me, the haunting, haunting, haunting comes from the mess they leave in their wake!

It’s their spooky ectoplasmic remains left on our tiled floors they travel - worn and left dim, pale and filmy blue like the glaring eye of a vulture. Whenever the haze falls upon them, my blood runs cold.

I cautiously stare at the tiles as they taunt me with their cloudy film. I walk over them and hear their slight moan, a groan of lethal fright. Not just a growl of torture or woe, but a whimper of un-dead feet, bone chillingly moving over the 175 year old tiles, the bone crushing “crunch” of ceramic-against-ceramic sound that silently cuts through the night with its low, stifled clattering.

Arising in the night from their horrid screams, or sometimes their quiet siren’s songs - at midnight - when the rest of the world sleeps, I hear deepening, dreadful echoes of terror that distract me from my slumber…the patter of lifeless footsteps. (How do you tell a ghost to wipe its feet…heh? I can’t even get my partner, Richard to do that!). But even as I lay frozen and keep still - barely breathing - accompanied by the horrible hush of our 1833 house, strange noises from footsteps excite me to uncontrollable panic.

Waiting in the nighttime darkness until a single dim ray of moonlight appears through the skylight - like the silken thread of a black widow spider – falling upon the tiled flooring, igniting a glare upon the surface that mimics the scavenging eye of a raven…again I see the haunting dull blueness with that telltale gruesome veil that chills me to the very marrow of my bones. (Clean-freak that I am, I even have nightmares about this kinda’ stuff!)

But no matter, slimed, veiled, bloodied, soiled, or stained by the likes of Beelzebub, fiends, evil spirits, imps, mischievous sprites, or just the day-to-day foot traffic of family, friends and pets – the tiles of my haunted dreams are actually easy to keep clean:

• Begin by dipping (not dripping!) a halved lemon into a bowl of borax to create an instant tile cleaner.
• Scrub using the lemon, juicy side down, rubbing the borax and citric acid mixture onto the tiles.
• Finish by rinsing with clean water.

Maybe it’s the incessant cleaning that makes me a lunatic (out damn spot!); or maybe it’s the shrieking souls from the fiery depths of hell that leave their footprints on our hallway tiles that taunt me to madness.

What makes me insane on Halloween night or any other nocturnal hour? I’m not sure…that’s for you and the creatures of the night to decide. (Deep scary laugh…)

Michael De Jong, is the author of “CLEAN: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing,” (www.zencleansing.com) produced by Joost Elffers Design and published in 2007 by Sterling Publishers. He lives in Jersey City with his partner, dog and three goldfish, all of which benefit from his natural cleaning techniques. He is currently writing a companion series of “CLEAN” books dealing with such topics as the body, first aid, organization, as well as posting weekly blogs on Hearst’s “The Daily Green” (www.thedailygreen.com) and the Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com). De Jong is also “Ask Mr. Green” for NBC-Universal-Bravo’s eco-website www.GreenIsUniversal.com. “CLEAN: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing” can be purchased at Barnes & Noble stores across the country or on-line at www.barnesandnoble.com or www.amazon.com. “CLEAN” is also an online course about “zen-cleansing” at Latitude U (www.LatitudeU.com).

Please consider the environment.

Make a Difference Day
“If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one.”
~ Mother Teresa

Either single-handedly, all by your lonesome, with the help of some friends, or volunteering with an organization, cooking up a large or small personal project, family effort, or community-wide endeavor is a wonderful way to score brownie points. Anyone – small fry or senior, individuals or groups, can whip-up volunteer projects that help others. Allow your ideas to percolate, and you’ll soon discover what your community needs. “Make a Difference Day” is really all about neighbors serving neighbors.

No matter whether you’re a scrambled student, a butter-fingered bartender, or even a half-baked housepainter, there are always a few extra hours to consider volunteering an afternoon of your skills: painting a neighbor’s porch or finger-painting with the kid next door; removing a scrap heap of trash from the side of a highway or scrap-booking memories at the Senior Center; granny-sitting or babysitting, swinging your kids at the local park or swinging a hammer to help with some carpentry, twisting a screwdriver to assist with electrical work or twisting taffy with some school kids; you get the idea…you could coach a sporting event, offer computer assistance, replant a flower or vegetable bed, do some office work, visit with someone whose lonely, collect food for the homeless or even work in a soup kitchen.

With all of this not-so subtle discussion of food, food, and more food…on “Make a Difference Day” how about cleaning a neighbor's kitchen appliances? (You knew I was going there - now didn’t ya’!) It doesn’t need to take a month of Sundays to quickly and safely clean a kitchen. Here are a few quick pointers and eco-recipes to make your visit speedy and easy as pie.

Coffee maker:
To clean an automatic drip coffee maker run full-strength white vinegar through a normal brew cycle. Rinse by running plain water through the cycle twice. The pot will be remarkably clean and your coffee will taste better than ever. (Tip: coffee sometimes tastes bitter because of soapy residue…so never wash your pot with soap.)

Dishwasher:
To clean a dishwasher (I know, it sounds like an oxymoron—but the darn things do get yucky over time!), place a cup of white vinegar into the bottom of the appliance and operate through an entire cycle. Do this once a month to reduce soap build up on the inner rollers, racks gaskets and sprayers.

Garbage disposal:
Pour 1/2 cup of salt into the garbage disposal. Then, by running the disposal following manufacturer's directions, you'll send any odors down the drain! And for an extra treat, cut up a lemon and let the disposal do its job.

Microwave:
Boil 1/4 cup of white vinegar and 1 cup of water in a glass or plastic container in your microwave for two minutes. The condensation from the boiling mixture will loosen splattered-on-food and those mysterious cheesy lumps, and will even deodorize the machine in the process. Wipe the inside clean with a damp cloth or sponge.

Oven:
To prevent greasy oven buildup in the first place, dip a sponge in full-strength white vinegar and wipe down all sides of a clean oven, inside and out.

Refrigerator:
Wash out a refrigerator with a solution of equal parts water and white vinegar. It will make everything sparkle.

On “Make a Difference Day” do something – anything – to help out a friend or a neighbor in need. If cleaning someone else’s kitchen isn’t your cup of tea and you don't have a first class project to steak your reputation on - sleep on it, the perfect idea is bound to turnip.

Michael De Jong, is the author of “CLEAN: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing,” (www.zencleansing.com) produced by Joost Elffers Design and published in 2007 by Sterling Publishers. He lives in Jersey City with his partner, dog and three goldfish, all of which benefit from his natural cleaning techniques. He is currently writing a companion series of “CLEAN” books dealing with such topics as the body, first aid, organization, as well as posting weekly blogs on Hearst’s “The Daily Green” (www.thedailygreen.com) and the Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com). De Jong is also “Ask Mr. Green” for NBC-Universal-Bravo’s eco-website www.GreenIsUniversal.com. “CLEAN: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing” can be purchased at Barnes & Noble stores across the country or on-line at www.barnesandnoble.com or www.amazon.com. “CLEAN” is also an online course about “zen-cleansing” at Latitude U (www.LatitudeU.com).

Please consider the environment.

International Skeptics Day
“I'm looking for loopholes.”
~W. C. Fields, when asked why he was reading the Bible.

Ptolemy believed the sun revolved around the earth. Linus believed in the “Great Pumpkin.”

(Sally to Linus, after missing Halloween… “What a fool I was. I could've had candy, apples, and gum, and cookies and money and all sorts of things. But no! I had to listen to you! What a fool I was. Trick or Treats come only once a year, and I missed it by sitting in a pumpkin patch with a blockhead!”)

When I was a kid I believed in the “Push-Me-Pull-You” – the two-headed llama from the Dr. Doolittle stories. (I was such a sucker!) In my ‘tweens - upset and completely horrified - I stood in front of a caged, one-headed, completely healthy and whole llama and said “How could this have happened…where’s its other head!” I did ultimately find some comfort for my naiveté when I learned that Cher thought Mount Rushmore was a natural phenomenon!

Our culture is filled with mountains of myths and mythinformation (couldn’t resist that!) - Santa, UFOs, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Bigfoot, Crop Circles, the Loch Ness monster - in the famous words of Benjamin Franklin, “It is so; it is not so. It is so; it is not so.” I’m not always certain, either…perhaps you could call me a Doubting Thomas.

In case you don’t know, to be called a Doubting Thomas means that you’re someone who - without straightforward, tangible, right in your face proof - refuses to believe in any number of things. (e.g. See the list above.) The expression is based on the doubt of the Apostle Thomas concerning the resurrection of Jesus. Although Jesus had been crucified, Thomas only became a true believer when he was able to place his fingers into the resurrected Jesus’ wounds. (After that llama incident, I think I’d require a demonstration like that, too!)

Skeptics are everywhere. And if you’re not certain as to who they are, take a mindful look around - they’re easily identifiable as the folks that doubt truth and accepted-theory. They just won’t see or accept what’s “a given,” what’s believed by the majority of the people based on scientific scrutiny. When I’m asking questions, I’m curious, and when I’m questioning, I’m skeptical. But when I refuse to separate fact from fiction, that makes me just plain-old blind to reality.

Take for example Governor and Vice Presidential (shoot me now!) candidate Sarah Palin. Perhaps the Tooth Fairy, The Easter Bunny and maybe even Doubting Thomas himself told her that climate change and global warming aren’t caused by human behavior and that a changing environment could never have been man-made. We can all fail to recognize the reality of global warming much like Palin thinks that drilling in the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is swell for birds, fish and wildlife. But until we all place our own hands into the proverbial wounds of the world, we’ll all continue to doubt our own personal responsibilities.

And much like the Gov’s responsibility to own up to the truth, we, too, can make mico-steps towards change. While carefully and safely cleaning our bodies or our homes, (gun-toting-moose-hating-soccer-mom, lipstick-wearing-or-not, notwithstanding) by being thoughtful of our actions and intentions while we do even the smallest of tasks, we meet ourselves in a simple, mindful act of purifying our personal environment, and by extension, our ever-changing world environment. I believe that every individual can have a positive effect on the enormous problem of Global Warming, and I believe that it can happen one household at a time. (Forgetting about the Push-Me-Pull-You kerfuffle, of this I’m certain.)

Bullwinkle-the-Moose once said, “Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what can you believe?” (Even the moose was a skeptic!)

Michael De Jong, is the author of “CLEAN: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing,” (www.zencleansing.com) produced by Joost Elffers Design and published in 2007 by Sterling Publishers. He lives in Jersey City with his partner, dog and three goldfish, all of which benefit from his natural cleaning techniques. He is currently writing a companion series of “CLEAN” books dealing with such topics as the body, first aid, organization, as well as posting weekly blogs on Hearst’s “The Daily Green” (www.thedailygreen.com) and the Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com). De Jong is also “Ask Mr. Green” for NBC-Universal-Bravo’s eco-website www.GreenIsUniversal.com. “CLEAN: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing” can be purchased at Barnes & Noble stores across the country or on-line at www.barnesandnoble.com or www.amazon.com. “CLEAN” is also an online course about “zen-cleansing” at Latitude U (www.LatitudeU.com).

Please consider the environment.

Coming-Out Day
“Come out, come out wherever you are…”
(From “The Wizard of Oz”)
~ Harold Arlen & E.Y. Harburg

I have “special” needs - some might call them obsessions - but I prefer to call them standards. I like a clean home and orderly storage. But more than that, I want my junk where I can find it and I want it all to look like something—a place for everything and everything in its place! In an average afternoon - as part of a cleaning ritual - I’ll iron sheets for the bedrooms, wipe down the kitchen, rearrange our living room, organize the bathrooms, tidy our basement and yes… even organize our closets.

By today’s standards - depending on your lifestyle, needs, and desired outcome - uniquely crafted closets offer a meaningful use of space in any home or apartment. Considering all of the options, the perfect closet can be a swell place to hoard your handbags, stash sport-coats, stockpile shoes and allow lingerie to linger. It’s also a place to relegate last season’s dresses, abandon busted umbrellas, forget those fake-fun-furs, put presents meant for re-gifting, and bury baggage otherwise used to travel to far away, sandy and sunny ports.

Although we think of closets as places to squirrel away stuff and hang our clothes, historically for the very rich, they were actually small secret, private, concealed rooms usually attached to a bedroom.

But nowadays, to be kept hidden or “closeted” is most often used as a way of describing something or someone whose behavior might be embarrassing, controversial…or even gay.

National Coming Out Day was founded 1988 by Dr. Robert Eichberg and Jean O'Leary, in celebration of the second Gay March on Washington, D.C. the previous year. The purposes of both were to promote awareness of gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender rights and to rejoice in it all. For 20 years, it’s been a day to publicly celebrate being who you are, and is often used as an opportunity to tell others as well.

Coming out, while different for every individual, is a critical part of accepting that you’re gay, bisexual, lesbian or transgender. (Imagine if heterosexual folks had to have a tear- and angst-filled moment when they made the brave decision to declare their sexual orientation or gender identity and risk being rejected, fired, beaten, thrown out of their home, etc.?) For some lgbt people, the experience is joyful; for some it’s uncomfortable; for some it instills anger in those they come out to; for some it’s a tragic time of rejection and depression. But for many, once proclaimed, it’s a time of freedom, relief, and often a moment of “Gee, we were waiting for you to tell us!” when coming out to supportive family, co-workers and friends.

When I came out to my dear friend, Robert, we celebrated over steaks and Martini’s at a tony steak house in Manhatttan. When I came out to even more friends when visiting from my hometown of Chicago - in celebration at my East Village apartment - we all ate cake, drank Champaign and jumped on the beds. When I came out to my sister Mags, she said "Honey, you’ve done a lousy job of hiding it. I've known that for years!”

But when I was only fourteen my mom came out for me. While folding cloths together she said that she thought I might just be kinda’ different from her other two kids (Maybe it was my ability to crochet that tipped her off?) and that if I had special questions she said she’d always be there to answer them for me.

Now that I am no longer in the closet, there’s plenty of room for other things in there! I’m always putting away belongings and endlessly tidying up by stuffing clothes, brooms, bed and bath linens, winter coats, hats and who-knows-what into closets. Unfortunately, depending on the humidity, they can sometimes smell musty. That’s when I get out the baking soda to freshen them up. I just tear off the top of a fresh box, put it on the floor or a shelf in the closet, and let it do its thing. After a month or so, I replace the old baking soda with a fresh box and use the old stuff for some other cleaning projects to dispose of it—it never goes to waste!

Here at home (and hopefully yours, too) our closets are meant for our baggage and belongings and not the people we love. If you’re either “in”, “out” or somewhere inbetween, it’s important to live life gloriously, in full view, sharing your joys and life-experiences openly…even if you’re not gay but just a closeted cleaning freak.

Michael De Jong, is the author of “CLEAN: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing,” (www.zencleansing.com) produced by Joost Elffers Design and published in 2007 by Sterling Publishers. He lives in Jersey City with his partner, dog and three goldfish, all of which benefit from his natural cleaning techniques. He is currently writing a companion series of “CLEAN” books dealing with such topics as the body, first aid, organization, as well as posting weekly blogs on Hearst’s “The Daily Green” (www.thedailygreen.com) and the Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com). De Jong is also “Ask Mr. Green” for NBC-Universal-Bravo’s eco-website www.GreenIsUniversal.com. “CLEAN: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing” can be purchased at Barnes & Noble stores across the country or on-line at www.barnesandnoble.com or www.amazon.com. “CLEAN” is also an online course about “zen-cleansing” at Latitude U (www.LatitudeU.com).

Please consider the environment.

The Jewish New Year
“We will open the book. Its pages are blank…
The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.”
~Edith Lovejoy Pierce

On Rosh Hashanah – the time of year when God decides whose names get added to the “Book of Life” (hopefully yours!) - Jews across the world get a clarion call when the shofar (ram’s horn) is blown, to awaken them from their self-righteousness, and to begin the process of atoning for the sins of the past year. During the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the practice of tashlikh is observed, in which prayers are recited near natural flowing water. It’s the moment when one’s sins are cast upon the water, and literally, pieces of bread or small stones are tossed into the river or stream so that symbolically you can watch your bad deeds start to float away.

Because it is also a time of gathering and eating with family (my partner Richard is Jewish, and boy do we eat and eat and eat at these holiday dinners), to be sure, there’ll be plenty of dusting, vacuuming, washing, polishing, scrubbing and waxing alongside a tremendous amount of cooking, baking, roasting, and preparing gallons and gallons of chicken soup.

But more than being a time of feasting, Rosh Hashanah begins a 10-day period of repenting—ending in Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and the actual start of the New Year. Biblical scholars believe that when the Prophet John, The Baptist, in the Book of Matthew (3:2) said "...Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," he was referring to the Jewish New Year and they think that he was speaking on the eve of Yom Kippur. He was announcing the final call for repentance before the Day of the Covering of Sin (Yom Kippur).

The Hebrew term for this period of repentance is Teshuvah which means returning to the predestined path set for us when we were born. The Jewish view is to use mistakes to grow and move forward, because - as we all know - mistakes happen and fixing them so that they aren’t repeated can be a test…literally and figuratively.

So in preparing for the Jewish New Year celebration, the act of cleaning internal and external impurities becomes the real challenge and the real goal. (Gee, I can make a cleaning metaphor out of anything, huh!!??)

Imagine, for instance, a bathtub that’s not been scrubbed over the course of an entire year. If such a tub existed, there’d be blackened, oily footprints everywhere, shampoo gunked up here and there, splats of toothpaste along the rim, dribbles of conditioner under that caddy thingy, soap scum galore, a gigantic clump of hair stuck in the strainer and a three inch ring of moldy residue all the way around the tub. (That butcher, baker and candlestick maker must have been complete slobs!) But in all seriousness, it’s hard to make yourself clean (or restful, or contemplative, or peaceful) in any dirty place let alone in a grubby tub.

Metaphorically, each of us is a bathtub wanting to be clean, and Rosh Hashanah becomes the perfect chance to start fresh. It’s an opportunity to buff away blunders, rub polish onto our faux pas, and scrub satisfaction back into our souls—and if need be, “wash that man right outta our hair!”

It can start with recognizing our unfortunate shortcomings, putting a stop to unfortunate actions, regretting our unfortunate behaviors, feeling truly sorry for being so unfortunately nasty, owning and explaining our personal idiocy, asking for and hopefully finding forgiveness, and then never, never, never repeating our unfortunate mistakes (the hardest rub of all!!). And along the way we might ask ourselves “Am I hurting others, am I blind to what’s important, am I being insensitive and – most importantly – am I getting in my own way?” It’s kind of a “scrub-a-dub-dub” that’s good for our bathtub, our brain and our soul.

But if your bathtub is as dirty as the one I just described (Someone hold my hand - I think I’m gonna’ pass out.) or you just need to make it shine like new on a weekly basis - toss in a pinch of salt for good luck (and then another larger pinch for its amazing ability to scrub so well) and a generous sprinkling of baking soda over the entire surface. Then scrub like the dickens with a dampened soft cloth. My favorite part is to then finish up by jumping barefoot into the tub and splishing-n-splashing clear water everywhere. (Bet ya’ wouldn’t dare do that with that bleach-infused commercial stuff, now would ya?) And if you’re the type who takes “the casting of one’s sins upon the water” literally, the jumping in part is - of course – a metaphoric bonus, too. Once rinsed, you’ll find the whiter-than-white porcelain tub that once lay hidden and lost behind all that grime.

Rosh Hashanah and the Celebration of the Jewish New Year (or even cleaning your bathtub for that matter) isn’t only about becoming squeaky-clean or about being a better person - it’s really just about being aware, about being mindful, and about being just plain-old kind.

Michael De Jong, is the author of “CLEAN: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing,” (www.zencleansing.com) produced by Joost Elffers Design and published in 2007 by Sterling Publishers. He lives in Jersey City with his partner, dog and three goldfish, all of which benefit from his natural cleaning techniques. He is currently writing a companion series of “CLEAN” books dealing with such topics as the body, first aid, organization, as well as posting weekly blogs on Hearst’s “The Daily Green” (www.thedailygreen.com) and the Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com). De Jong is also “Ask Mr. Green” for NBC-Universal-Bravo’s eco-website www.GreenIsUniversal.com. “CLEAN: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing” can be purchased at Barnes & Noble stores across the country or on-line at www.barnesandnoble.com or www.amazon.com. “CLEAN” is also an online course about “zen-cleansing” at Latitude U (www.LatitudeU.com).

Please consider the environment.