Before moving to Germany, I thought it might be a good idea to practice being a housewife. I knew the basics: clothes get washed once a week, vacuuming gets done once in a while, etc. But I knew that once in Germany, housewifery would be my career, not just a part-time hobby.

I had only begun to realize just how serious Germans are about cleaning after observing my neighbors rake their driveways (for awhile I had nightmares that there would be a knock on the door in the middle of the night and my husband would wake to find me gone, taken by the dirt police because there was a hair in the sink), but I knew I was really in trouble after gazing down row after row after row after row of cleaning products in the supermarket. There was something for every conceivable (and some inconceivable) kind of dirt contingency. (And even with the wide selection, I still can't find something as simple as Lysol.) I was overwhelmed by the choices and the language. What I thought was a bottle of bleach turned out to be stuff for washing curtains. (Well, it looked like a bleach bottle and the picture showed the morning sun shining on freshly laundered white things flapping in the breeze. It wouldn't have been such a disappointment, except that I don't have curtains.) How was I supposed to know that Gardinen wasn't a brand name?

For educational purposes (and partly for entertainment) I would pick a certain section of the cleaning wares and make a careful study of what was there. I didn't bring my dictionary (can you say Auslander?), but I would write down words (pretending to cross things off my shopping list) or just try to remember them until I got home. My current fascination is with dust cloths.

Never in my life have I seen so many different types. Is Germany more dusty than any other part of the world? There are blue cloths, white cloths, cloths for dry dusting, cloths for wet dusting, honey-impregnated cloths, cloths for dusting wood, TVs, windows, counter tops, the silver part of the stove, the burner part of the stove, and the list goes on and on. How would I choose? Easy -- I would try them all. I'd buy a package after studying the picture (do I own one of whatever the disembodied hand is dusting?) then, once I got home, I would study the instructions. Yes, I know, it's a dust rag. You just use it to move the dust around. But there's something unsettling about not knowing what all the words mean. I refuse to change my brand of laundry soap because I spent three hours translating the bag. And I didn't want the expense of having to buy another honey-impregnated cloth because the care instructions said something about "do not put in dryer because the honey will melt, coat the inside of the dryer, and stain all your clothes for the next five dry cycles."

Now I'm prepared for any kind of dust emergency. I'm thinking about tackling oven cleaners next. I figure that if I attack one product category at a time, by the time I'm ready to move from Hamburg, I will have conquered the world of dirt. At this point (or maybe even before) you're probably thinking "Man, you need to get a life." Yeah, well, maybe. But when I do, I know it will be dust-free.