A wise man once said, “There are two sides to the universe. One side has dirty windows and the other side clean. This is the Yin and the Yang of window cleaning.”

Actually, I don’t know how wise he was. I was in a coffee shop and the two guys at the next table were playing chess. I just happened to overhear their conversation. My first thought was that he was joking. But, as I thought about it, it occurred to me, maybe he wasn’t too far off.

The Yin and the Yang are concepts of Taoism. The idea, as described in the Website www.personaltao.com, is that the Yin and the Yang have “Two halves that together complete wholeness.” We’re all familiar with the symbols of the Yin and the Yang. But, if the chess player in the coffee shop was serious, how could he think that the Yin and the Yang could apply to window cleaning. That’s just crazy, right?

Aha, not so fast.

Reading further in the Personal Tao Website, you learn that Yin means shady side and Yang means sunny side. Yin means night and Yang means day. These concepts, or definitions, are easily applied to window cleaning. Ok, maybe we need to stretch them a little to get there but, to humor our chess-playing friend, let’s go there anyhow.

Presumably and clearly, if you’ll pardon the pun, according to ‘the wiseman’s definition,’ Yin represents dirty windows and Yang represents clean windows. Now, to achieve equilibrium in the universe, you may want to have only half of your windows cleaned. Maybe, if you have vertical double-hung windows, you can clean the bottom halves for your Yang and the leave the tops dirty, for your Yin. If they’re side-by-side double-hung windows, where possible, you could clean the southern side – the Yang – because that side is closer to the sun. If you have casement windows, you could measure to a halfway point and clean to that line.

Then again, you might achieve the Yin and the Yang of window cleaning by only cleaning the outside of your windows and leaving the inside dirty, unless you’d prefer to have the Yang closer at hand, in which case you’ll want to clean the insides.

There’s also the possibility that the Yin and the Yang of window cleaning is a temporal matter – the windows are clean sometimes – the Yang – and dirty others – the Yin. This works out well if you clean your windows once or twice each year. Since winter is the Yin of the seasons, and summer the Yang, you can clean your windows in the summer and leave them dirty in the winter.

The drawback to dirty windows in the winter is that, with cabin fever, it’s rather nice to look out, through clean windows, on a pristine blanket of snow while sipping a cup of coffee, with or without playing chess. Then again, maybe you should seek equilibrium elsewhere in the universe and allow the Yang to dominate your clean windows year round.