A big house means more to clean

Wood floors collect dust bunnies. Windows get rain- splashed and coated with pollen-and-bird-DNA. Woodwork needs wiping. The pale stucco front of the Tudor house reveals the tiny dried brown feet of ripped-down vines, which will need water-blasting and hand-removal. The scent of old wood that reveals itself on entry to the house needs a new lemon-scented candle, which I bought and lit to enjoy the reputed scent that was created for Madame Pompadour in the reign of Napoleon, but which smells like lemongrass spa lotion to me.
Lots of flower-watering is called for. Lots of sweeping, and of course, the picking up of sweatshirts and jackets flung by my 12-year-old son and 24-year-old stepdaughter (and me of course). It looks like I'll have some housekeeping duties I didn't expect with this house. I did expect the clothes and the cooking and the dish-washing (at which my husband excels). But the allegiance I swore to this home when we made our way through two months of counter-offers and financing agony to buy it calls for very specific care.
"Murphy's Oil Soap," counsels Lupe, my dear friend of 14 years and now cleaning woman again. "And only little on the mop, nothing too much, can cause prrroblem on the floor." I used to know how to nurture and take care of wood, from antiques to doors. Growing up going to an auction house filled with old brown furniture in the Civil War battlefields of Virginia taught me that. Reverence for wood is fealty to history. I am the head of a house now, a large one, although not overly, and it's filled with rooms, glass windows that open to the sound of the faint sea, and old and new furniture made of burled, inlaid, leather-covered and polished wood. Flowers in big pots out back thirst for attention. I must give it to them. I owe them that.