When we put out a call for literary references to cleaning, several people mentioned Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren.
Pippi cleans with gusto but follows her own unorthodox methods. In her topsy turvy home, all the conventional pieties about housekeeping are turned on their head, so that cleaning becomes a fun and creative act.
Here's a sampling:
"We don't have any school today because we're having Scrubbing Vacation," said Tommy to Pippi.
"Scrubbing Vacation? Well, I like that!" said Pippi. "Another injustice! Do I get any Scrubbing Vacation? Indeed I don't, though goodness knows I need one. Just look at the kitchen floor. But for that matter," she added, "now I come to think of it, I can scrub without any vacation. And that's what I intend to do right now, Scrubbing Vacation or no Scrubbing Vacation. I'd like to see anybody stop me! You two sit on the kitchen table, out of the way."
Tommy and Annika obediently climbed up on the kitchen table, and Mr. Nilsson hopped up after them and went to sleep in Annika's lap.
Pippi heated a big kettle of water and without more ado poured it out on the kitchen floor. She took off her big shoes and laid them neatly on the bread plate. She tied two scrubbing brushes on her bare feet and skated over the floor, plowing through the water so that it splashed all around her.
"I certainly should have been a skating princess," she said and kicked her left foot up so high that the scrubbing brush broke a piece out of the overhead light.
"Grace and charm I have at least," she continued and skipped nimbly over a chair standing in her way.
"Well, now I guess it's clean," she said at last and took off the brushes.
"Aren't you going to dry the floor?" asked Annika.
"Oh, no, it can dry in the sun," answered Pippi. "I don't think it will catch cold so long as it keeps moving."
And, from a scene at Pippi's birthday party:
When Mr. Nilsson had emptied his cup he turned it upside down and put it on his head. When Pippi saw that, she did the same, but as she had not quite drunk all her chocolate a little stream ran down her forehead and over her nose. She caught it with her tongue and lapped it all up.
"Waste not, want not," she said.
Tommy and Annika licked their cups clean before they put them on their heads.
When everybody had had enough and the horse had had his share, Pippi took hold of all four corners of the tablecloth and lifted it up so that the cups and plates tumbled over each other as if they were in a sack. Then she stuffed the whole bundle in the woodbox.
"I always like to tidy up a little as soon as I have eaten," she said.