I have vivid memories of my mother cleaning and re-waxing our wood floors when I was young. It was a hands-and-knees job, using Murphy’s Oil Soap followed by Johnson’s Paste Wax. After the latter was applied and laboriously buffed, the floors gleamed. And a kid walking around a corner too quickly in socks was almost guaranteed to wipe out entirely. (This is not hypothetical.)

Once, she borrowed our next-door neighbor’s tall machine—I recall it being the size of a heavy, all-chrome upright vacuum but with a pair of spinning plates to which you could attach either sanding pads or polishing pads—and sanded the kitchen, living room, and dining room before cleaning and waxing. At the time, it did not seem strange for a person (a petit, 70-something, with a soft Miss’sippi accent and a fridge containing prized, single-serving glass bottles of “Co-cola,” which she would occasionally offer to you, but you had to “call your momma” first for permission to drink one) to own a giant contraption for refinishing her own floors. Of course, she would also lend it out.

I am thinking of all of this because I just spend ninety minutes scrubbing my own kitchen floor on my hands and knees. It is also wood, but I used a stiff bristle brush, bucket after bucket of hot water laced with TSP, several rags, and a sponge. I have managed to get it cleaner. Tomorrow, I will tackle it with a mop and one more once-over with TSP, to be followed by a wood cleaner whose directions are to wipe it onto the floor and then leave it to dry. (I ask you: how does anything you do not remove from the floor properly clean it?) I am not using Murphy’s Oil Soap because my floor is not waxed but coated with…something, and thus the oil soap will produce a film rather than a sheen of clean. My final step will be a no-wax product that seals.

What is my point here? I think it’s partly a general appreciation that the labor of cleaning is serious work. Degreasing and scrubbing and wiping and brightening is work that generations of mothers have done quietly and routinely. Its deep-cleaning iteration was work that I felt I rarely had time for when my kids were growing up because who can spend ninety minutes tackling the floor in one room, which is just a fraction of the weekend cleaning that needs to happen, when there are also skating lessons and basketball games, apple-orchard visits and science-homework-helping to do in those short two days?

Then, of course, your children eventually grow a little, and can help with the cleaning. Which is a relief because you don’t have to do the laundry and vacuuming and bathrooms by yourself every weekend, but which doesn’t necessarily result in the kitchen floor getting more than a quick damp mop, because there are also closets to purge for outgrown things to donate and leaves to rake and dog nose-prints to remove from windows. Not to mention: leaves to jump in and cakes to bake and picnics to go on where you will all eat cake in the sunshine.

And so, here you are, nine years after you first moved into this house, reminding yourself that hands-and-knees is sometimes the ONLY way to get a thing truly clean. Which, I sort of think, if you didn’t have a mother who waxed her own floors periodically and refinished them at least once, you might presume is overkill. But the buckets-worth of dirty water that I dumped, from scrubbing a floor that has been swept almost daily, and swiffered and bona-d and steam-mopped periodically, are a grim reminder of the grime we coexist with.

I think, too, of my great-aunt Gayle. The one who legendarily had a regular cleaning schedule that included things like mopping the whole house on Mondays, wiping down all the baseboards on Tuesdays, and polishing her four sons’ shoes every single late-afternoon while they rested, so that they (the boys and the shoes) would be shined and perfect by the time Daddy came home for dinner.

That was the labor of the 1950s, and yes, some things are easier now, not least of which are toddlers’ velcro-closing sneakers that do not need polishing. Still, there are times when nothing will sort out the kitchen floor but hours and hours of labor. Because who among us can clean daily the way Aunt Gayle could?

This is not some nostalgic longing for that time (though I do love the feel of a truly clean floor underfoot). It’s just a musing and a marveling, as I contemplate the tiredness in my own hands.

Aunt Gayle, by the way, would not have been on her hands and knees on her kitchen floor on a Saturday. Her Saturdays were baking days. Because with four hungry boys in the house, it would take several cakes and pies to get through the week.

Though I wouldn’t have wanted her schedule for my own, I admire her immensely. There is something deeply pleasing about a work schedule that prioritizes cakes as much as scrubbing. Doing so, it seems to me, marks both equally as labor. It also implies a form of sweetness to the rhythm of such a week. I suspect I’ll be chewing on this idea all weekend, as I continue trying to make my own kitchen floor shine.