Housekeeping......

I've stated on this blog many, many times how much I hate housework.

And yet, that's not the truth.

I don't really hate housework. If it would just STAY worked.

I guess what I hate is the unending cycle of housework. It seems you no sooner have the house clean than it's time to turn around and start all over again.

We have wonderful smooth tile floors in the kitchen and dining room. Tile that I just HAD TO HAVE and PICKED OUT PERSONALLY. They're white. Duh. They are also dirt magnets. I can sweep, sweep again, vacuum for good measure, and then mop them, and within 15 minutes the first visible specks appear. And I promise we're not dirty people. We just tend to go outside sometimes.

I do like the feeling of satisfaction I get from cleaning house. After it's clean, I mean. I don't get no satisfaction at all WHILE I'm cleaning. And I don't know about the rest of you, but it seems like every single thing I do when cleaning house leads to ... another thing to clean. It's unending, I tell you. 

There are some chores that I have resigned myself to doing regularly. One is laundry. I pick a couple of nights a week and do usually a single load of laundry (mixing colored clothes and whites ... shhh, please don't tell my mother). I used to have a bad habit of leaving the last load of laundry in the dryer, particularly since the washer and dryer are in the basement and it was easy to ignore. I seem to have outgrown that, however, and now I'm pretty good about making sure even the last load gets folded and put away before I go to bed.

I'm also fairly loyal about washing dishes, even if I don't use the dishwasher. In a previous wifetime, when my ex and I first married, Sweet Girl and I lived with his father in an old farmhouse. (He said it was because his mother had recently died and he didn't want to leave his father all alone. I should have realized it was really because it meant he didn't have to be a grown-up and GET A JOB any time soon.) I cooked almost every night, and we didn't HAVE a dishwasher. Sometimes it was late, and I would leave the dishes stacked in the sink. I guess I thought I would wash them the NEXT night when I didn't have any more time than I did that night? Who knows...I was an idiot. See references to ex for confirmation.

I was always the first one to get up in the mornings, and I realized after leaving the dishes a couple of times that my elderly father-in-law had gotten up in the middle of the night and washed the dishes. I didn't leave them anymore after that. My ex thought it was a great arrangement, having someone else wash the dishes. But I was mortified.

Another thing that contributes to my less-than-stellar housekeeping is the fact that I don't like just doing part of it. I can't just sweep the living room. I have to then sweep the kitchen, mop the kitchen, mop the hardwood floors in the living room (a vast room, since Hubby removed the wall that divided it into TWO rooms years ago), vacuum the rug, vacuum the upstairs, dust the furniture, clean the ceiling fans, blah blah blah blah. Who has time to do all those things EVERY SINGLE TIME? And still find time to crochet, read books (I'm engrossed in an excellent 852-page one right now), and ride bicycles?

I realize it's illogical to say if I don't have time to do it all, I just won't do any of it. But that's my story.

And I'm sticking to it.