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Plants, real and fake, need cleaning before they are overrun with dust mites and spider webs.

There are some places you just expect to be less than spotless. The kitchen at the greasy spoon diner for example.  Or your local garage.  Or the supermarket during cherry season (If you thought banana peels were a hazard, try walking across a floor sticky with slippery Bing skins!).

Now think squeaky clean. The germ-free, icky-less state you would expect to find upon entering a room at a reputable hotel. Or in a child’s nursery. How about the doctor’s office? That should scream clean, right?

I thought so, too, until I walked in to the lobby of a family doctor’s office in Kanata to wait for my husband. I had 20 minutes or so on my hands, so I chose one of the uncomfortable chairs on offer and searched for a magazine to read. Finding nothing worth the trouble, I sat back and started to take a good look around.

I couldn’t believe my eyes!

Behind me (I chose a row of chairs in front of a window) were several large plants, each one so dusty that it was impossible to tell — are they real or are they fake? The dust was at least an inch thick, which means they had not been washed down in at least two years — probably more.

To my right a dusty mirror hung crooked on the wall, the only decoration in the drab room.

To my left was an area set aside for children. There were trucks and blocks to play with, along with a handful of books to read. I was horrified to note that the toys and books were absolutely filthy — a white truck was black with grime and the books were likewise dirty and sticky. Can you imagine a small child placing this filth in his mouth? To make matters worse, the carpet beneath the play area was badly stained and in need of a good vacuuming.

It was truly shocking. This is a doctor’s office?

When my husband came out of his MD’s office with his shoes in his hand, he could see that I looked puzzled. He filled me in: The doctor, presumably concerned about germs, asked all patients to remove their shoes and leave them outside his door before entering his private space.

Now that’s funny! I guess the poor guy was so busy worrying about his own health that he forgot to take a good look around the waiting room. If he had, he would have called the Health Unit in for an emergency decontamination.

For me, the biggest hazard in that office was all the dust (I wisely kept the trucks out of my mouth). In 20 minutes, my sinuses had swelled up and a headache raged. A man beside me couldn’t stop sneezing. Little wonder — you could smell the dust in the air.  Not very pleasant.

It was with visions of that horrible doctor’s office in my mind that I got out my stool, wet a rag with tap water and began the task of cleaning the fake fig tree that had been plunked in the corner of my living room by the movers a few days earlier. It took two hours to complete the chore — leaf by leaf — but wow! Gone was the construction dust that had collected during repairs to our condo just before the move. It was now a shiny, new tree that literally glowed beside the fireplace. I had to put my shades on, it was that bright.

Of course, I could have saved time and taken the artificial plant outside and cleaned it with the hose. Or I could have given it a real shower indoors. The problem with both these methods is that there’s no guarantee water spots won’t show up when it dries. Yes, the only way to get a spotless plant is to clean each leaf by hand. The results will be worth the effort!

So if you have an Open House coming up, don’t forget to clean your plants — real and fake. Not only will shiny plants make your house sparkle, they will also be kind to people like me who can smell dust a mile away.  When it comes to selling your house, that’s nothing to sneeze at.