Even CEOs Should Clean Their Own Bathrooms Sometimes
In fact, everyone should.
“Spend money to save time” is a common advice of business gurus. It’s advice successful people offer “poor people” who are silly enough to spend half a day or more working on their homes instead of shedding a hundred or so on a cleaning service.
“Your time is your most valuable asset,” they say. By their logic, you shouldn’t be mowing your own lawn, cooking your own food, or cleaning your own bathroom, your time is much too valuable to be wasted in such menial tasks. Your time is better spend on organizing your business, creating, learning something new, or “recharging” (whatever that means to you).
It doesn’t matter if the cost of a cleaning service would wreck your budget, by their logic, your time is certainly more valuable than the couple hundred bucks you’re likely to spend. It’s time you recognize that fact and start to value yourself.
Although I understand the overall logic of “spend money to save time instead of spend time to save money,” there are also benefits to getting back in touch with the dirtiest parts of what it means to be human, especially if you haven’t done it in a while (or ever). Time may very well be money, but not everything in life is, or should be, about money.
Here’s why everyone should clean their own bathroom sometimes, including the richest and most powerful among us, and especially those who love to warn others against it.
Why the bathroom?
When it comes to the basics of being human, we’re all the same. We all have the same biological necessities, and the bathroom is arguably the place where we come in contact with the dirtiest of them all, in the literal sense of the word.
The bathroom is where we leave our intellectual, “superior” human brains out the door and become animals again. Our choices and actions outside the bathroom may set us apart, but inside it, we’re all the same.
In the kitchen, we may cook different foods using different spices and techniques. In the bedroom, our sexual preferences and kinks set us apart. Inside the bathroom, however, we’re all reduced to the same inescapable reality of our nature, the parts we like to pretend don’t exist, but which are the most common lower denominator between all of us.
It’s only a big deal if you’re not used to it
I haven’t met anyone who loves to clean bathrooms. I have met plenty who think is gross, a lot who think it’s no big deal, and some who do it for a living.
Those who have that as a job, just have it as a job. They perform a service for which their compensated, end of story.
Those who think is no big deal have done it enough times to realize that, well, it’s not that big a deal. They may not love it, but they know that what needs to be done, needs to be done, and they don’t think they’re too good to pull up their sleeves and manage it themselves.
Those who think cleaning a bathroom is gross and the lowest of chores are the most privileged of all people, having grown up in a bubble of maids or mothers who sheltered them from the reality that a grown adult should be able to handle their own filth. They are the ones who would benefit the most from cleaning their own bathroom, but sadly, they’re the least likely to do it.
They are the ones who this story is for.
There’s a dirty side to human existence — including your own
When you have the privilege — yes, privilege — to outsource your bathroom cleaning to someone else, you lose touch with the dirty, raw side of human existence and its consequences. You may know that the bathroom gets dirty, you may know someone has to clean it from time to time, but that’s a completely different experience than actually getting down and doing it yourself.
Intellectually knowing that the bathroom needs cleaning but not doing it yourself detaches you from understanding what the actual job entails. It creates a barrier between your nice, clean, undisturbed existence and the reality of who you are: an animal that requires constant relieving of its body waste, regular washing and indulgent grooming.
A touch of humility makes anyone a better person
Getting down on your knees to scrub the soap scum and mildew from your own bathtub is an excellent reminder that you’re not too good for anything, and definitely not better than anyone else.
Perhaps you’re a good business person, a great CEO, or even a creative genius, but you’re in no way, shape or form better at being a human at the most basic level of the species. If you can take up an activity that reminds you of that, than take it, at least every once in a while, and as often as you need to to keep the memory fresh.
Just throwing money at a problem isn’t always the best solution
It makes sense to pay others to do work you don’t want to do, if you can afford it, but it’s also useful to remember that not every problem can be fixed by paying someone. Money isn’t always the best solution for every situation, besides, it never hurts to know how to pull up your sleeves and do it yourself.
Doing chores is also an excellent reminder of the privileges money awards you with. For all the talk of how valuable your time is, few things increase your appreciation for it than doing something you’d rather not have to.
Life is not a simple dichotomy between work and rest
Becoming too radical on the “spend money to save time” philosophy might lead you to believe your time is more precious than it actually is. It’s an idea that promotes spending time either being as productive as you can at work, or relaxing and resting your mind so you won’t burn out, which allows you to get back to work and continue your productivity obsession.
This dichotomy between work and rest is unrealistic to say the least. A rich life includes splitting your time in many different moments, including those that are neither work-related nor enjoyable, such as hours of boredom, and hours dedicated to essential tasks that keep your life running smoothly.
In essence, cleaning your bathroom reminds you that there’s more to life than working, enjoying yourself, and paying others to do what you don’t want to do; it’s a reminder a lot of people could use.
