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.

One Thing Leads to Another.....

I am not known for my domesticity. In fact, I am rather well known for my LACK of domesticity. It's not that I'm lazy or a slob, although my mother would probably argue vehemently with both of those statements.

I just don't spend my precious free time cleaning the house. I keep the laundry done regularly, although the last load (usually whites) may stay in the dryer for a day or two.

I wash the dishes EVERY night, and I make up the bed EVERY morning. Unless I leave Hubby in it, which is rare, and he refuses to be bothered with such minutiae as making up a bed.

My mother was a fanatic about house cleaning. I don't mean fanatic in the sense that her house was always spotless. With 5 kids, spotless wasn't possible. We all had chores, and I don't think any of us ever did them to her satisfaction. It was routine to be awakened on Saturday morning at some ungodly hour with Mother screaming, "Get up and clean up this $!%#**! house!"

No wonder housekeeping is not at the top of my priority list.

I also have another theory. I don't like doing something only partway. If I don't have time to do it ALL (and I rarely do), I'd just rather not bother.

Because how do you know what parts to do and what parts to leave undone?

Vacuum and not dust?

Sweet and not mop?

Pick up the clutter and not worry about the baseboards?

Sigh.

It's so depressing.

Today, for some reason, I got started cleaning and couldn't stop. One thing kept leading to another. I started at 8:30 this morning, and I finally stopped (sort of) at 3:30 when the sun made a brief appearance. At least I can say I was (sort of) in the pool on Memorial Day. Up to my knees. Which turned blue immediately.

Hubby came home mid-afternoon and could just barely get in the door because I had moved all the furniture to clean the floors. This was a full wall-to-wall cleaning, not one of those where I just cleaned the visible parts. He watched me for a moment and then asked, his brow furrowed teasingly, "You're not planning to leave me, are you?"

"Hell no!" I answered. "If I do leave you, I'm not leaving you with a clean house."

Vacuuming led to rolling up the area rugs to vacuum underneath.

Which led to using Murphy's Oil on the hardwood floors.

Which led to mopping the kitchen. Twice. (Sullen Teenager and her boyfriend dropped by just long enough to march through the freshly mopped kitchen.)

Which led to cleaning the dining table and chairs. How DO those chairs get splatters on them?

Which led to cleaning the china cabinet.

Which led to cleaning the trash can. (See what I mean about not knowing where to stop? Seriously. The trash can?)

Which somehow led to cleaning the oven.

Vacuuming the bedroom (including the baseboards) led to dusting.

Which meant cleaning off the dresser.

Which led to finding a pair of pants and uniform shirt of Hubby's that needed buttons.

Which led to finding three more shirts that had one or more buttons missing.

Which led to cleaning the CPAP machine. All the parts. None of which I was really sure I could put back together again.

Dusting the living room led to clearing off a space to put the charging valet my step-daughter gave me for Mother's Day.

Which led to putting away some candles I bought from a school fund raiser. I don't even know why I bought candles, since we can't burn them at school anymore, not after some dude left a candle burning at school overnight and caught the building on fire. The new addition they had just finished. Duh.

Which also led to putting away some Christmas ornaments I bought in Nashville and which had nestled themselves comfortably on the piano, content to wait there until I put the tree up again in November.

I went nonstop for 7 hours, and I still felt obligated to get on the elliptical.

I'll be quite happy to return to school tomorrow so I can get some rest.

All or Nothing.......

I tend to have an "all or nothing" attitude about several things, and it causes me trouble.

I think to myself, "I don't have time to clean the house completely from top to bottom, so I won't do anything at all." If I would just do several small things every day, I wouldn't have such a problem. Even when I DO have time to clean from top to bottom, it seems I never get finished. There's always something to do.

"I haven't exercised all this week, so why bother now?" Well that's obviously a self-defeating statement from the beginning. I've got to start somewhere. Actually, I did start somewhere today. I went to aerobics at the "Y" for the first time in months. But if I miss a day, I have this attitude that I've blown my consecutive days record (who exactly is counting, I wonder?) and I give up.

"I can't possibly grade everything I need to grade. So I'll just play a computer game instead." Sigh. No wonder I stay so far behind.

When I AM in the zone, I tend to be obsessive. I once lost 50 pounds on the Weight Watchers program, and it was because I. Did. Not. Deviate. In those days I counted every point, every bite, every calorie. And I exercised twice a day on many days. But it was hard to sustain, and naturally I gained the weight back. I kept if off for about 3 years, but it started creeping back up.

It DID work for smoking. I put cigarettes down and never touched them again. If only I could do food that way.

I can't attest to how obsessive I am about house work, because it's never happened.

Un-Goals for the New School Year

With the start of every new school year, I usually think of all the things I will do differently this year to make my job, my life, my everything better and more efficient. But this is my 23rd (!) year of teaching, and I realize it ain't likely to happen. (I'm an English teacher, so I have a free pass to use the word "ain't" every now and then. Look it up in the English Teacher's Code.)

Here, then, are my un-goals for this school year, things that I know will not change significantly.

1. Clean Desk - This will never happen. I won't even have the cleanest teacher's desk in my room. Students will occasionally volunteer to help my clear off my desk and make things neat and tidy, and I will allow them to do so. Then my desk will be back to its cluttered chaos within a few hours. That's just me. All the file folders, organizers, stacky things, and desk dividers will not help. Having a messy desk doesn't affect my teaching, so I have given myself permission not to stress about it.
   
2. Homemade Lunches - Although I will probably take my lunch to school more than not, I am wise enough to realize that there are going to be days when I just don't feel like making a lunch. I'll be up so late one night (or two or ten) working on my "part-time" online teaching job that I don't take the time to prepare anything. Or I'll be out of town for the weekend (probably on a bicycle ride, or a motorcycle ride) and I won't get home in time (or have enough energy) to go to the grocery store. Or hubby will be out of town and I will be on kitchen strike even more than I am when he is IN town. Or they'll be serving vegetable soup and PB J at school, which I find irresistible. I won't beat myself up if I occasionally eat a school lunch or order something.
3. Exercise - While we will continue our routine of walking in the park 3-4 times a week, and I will occasionally ride my bike on the weekends, and I will use the treadmill from time to time, I know that exercising every single day will not happen. Bad weather, lack of energy, hectic schedule, family obligations, and occasional social events will dictate that I skip a day of exercise every now and then. It will not be the deciding factor that kills my chances of being the world's next supermodel, and it won't make me a bad person.
   
4. Housework - We will always have clean clothes to wear, and we will always have something (mostly) nutritious to eat, and the dishes will (usually) be washed, and the bed will be made every day, and the health inspector won't find enough evidence to condemn our house, but I will not aspire to be June Cleaver. Furniture will be dusty, dog toys will be scattered in the living room, and the kitchen table will continue to accumulate a lot of the junk that makes its way into our house every day. Hubby doesn't think having a spotless house is required to be a good person/wife (although my mother DOES, but she hates animals and won't visit our house anyway), so I won't feel like a failure if my house is sometimes a little messy.
   
5. School Clothes - Although I would like to look like a fashion model, that isn't likely to happen either. There will be days when I dress for comfort and won't look as professional as I could. There will be days when I spend an extra 10 minutes emailing in the morning and don't save enough time to iron something. (And I will never iron a week's worth of clothes on the weekend, no matter how many times I say it.) I will occasionally have to resort to something that a) is clean; b) fits; c) I haven't already worn that week; and d) doesn't need to be ironed. It will not make me a less effective teacher if I am not wearing the absolute latest fashion.
   
6. Dinner - We will not have a home cooked meal with a lean meat, a green vegetable, and a starch every single night. For the same reasons that I won't always have time to exercise or prepare a healthy lunch, there will be nights that we are forced to order a pizza or run out for a burger or get by with a sandwich. We definitely won't starve to death.
   
7. Money - I will not suddenly become frugal and completely sensible about spending. I will occasionally splurge on something I don't need, I will sometimes waste money needlessly (whether intentionally or unintentionally), and I may hold my breath until payday rolls around again. But the bills will be paid, I will continue to contribute to ALL of our savings accounts, and we won't have to sacrifice necessities. Especially if we win the lottery (see wasting money, above).
8. Reading - I will not limit myself to only quality literature. I will occasionally resort to reading something strictly for entertainment or relaxation, not to elicit deep thought and reflection. I may even "waste" time in such pursuits when I could be cleaning the house or ironing clothes (see #4 and #5 above).
   

Okay, now I feel completely ready for the new school year. And I have no idea what I'm wearing tomorrow.