The Thursday Three

The list today is - My Three Most Hated Household Chores. If ever a list needed to be seventy two items long, this would be it. If I wanted a managable size list I should do The Three Household Chores I Enjoy. I could narrow that down real quick. 1) cooking, 2) uh... Does bringing in the newspaper count as a household chore? Never mind. Martha Stewart is in no danger here, trust me on this. The Health Department yes, Martha, no.



The irony is that I really love a clean house. I just don't want to do anything to make it that way. And since paying someone to do it obviously isn't in the cards, I only have two options. Do it myself or suck it up. Guess which one I choose most of the time? To be fair, my husband is awfully good about doing stuff around the house without even being asked, but he's gone a lot. The only time I enjoy cleaning the house is when I'm really ticked off at someone or something. Then it actually feels good. But...in lieu of working up a snit at someone, here we go...

#1. Cleaning the bathroom. Note that I don't say cleaning the toilet, which is the logical thing to hate to do. But I have three boys, you see, and the toilet really has nothing to do with it. They couldn't hit the Great Wall of China if they were standing on it, much less a small porcelain oval. Add the fact that they are easily distracted and you can imagine what I have to contend with. They are all perfectly capable of turning around mid-stream because of something they hear on the television three rooms away. I haven't sat on a dry toilet seat in fourteen years, and I see no signs of improvement in the near future. This picture cracks me up but it also makes me envious. I wish my kids would pee in the yard.





#2. Ironing. Seriously, what is the point to ironing? You spend ten minutes pressing a piece of fabric between a smelly ironing board and a steaming hot hunk of metal and five minutes after you put it on it looks exactly the same way it did to start with. I just don't get it. For years (pre-children) I would take everything to the dollar cleaners since they pressed everything for you. Then (post-children) I graduated to clothes that didn't need to be ironed, and that was my strategy for years.



My plan now is fully in effect. I spent three years in school at my advanced age to get a degree that would allow me to wear what is basically pajamas to work. The more rumpled you look the harder you are assumed to be working. Rumpled happens to be a look I can pull off. It's all those years of practice.



Some people will do anything to avoid ironing.








#3. Laundry. I've saved the worst for last. If I could, I'd put laundry in all three spots on this list. It isn't that it's difficult, it's just that it's never ending. You sort, you wash, you move it to the dryer, you take it out, you fold it and then you put it away. As soon as you get to the bottom of that horrendous pile there's something else to take it's place. When you come in my back door you are in my laundry room, so in theory I should have an incentive to stay caught up. Funny thing about those theories and how unrealistic they can be.

Now I will admit that the Film Geek does a great job staying ahead of the laundry. For that matter he is the household designated ironer, and always does lovely work. It's just that he does laundry the way I do, which is to take it out of the dryer and throw it in a pile on the couch until the mood to fold it and put it away strikes. A week later, when we can't locate the couch, we have a pile of wrinkled clothes that have most likely had dogs sleeping on them and have fallen on the floor at least once. I'm sure this all feeds into my ironing aversion. Sometimes I get on kicks where I deal with the laundry as soon as it comes out of the dryer, and those are the times I feel in control of my household. It's a feeling I adore, but it's oh so fleeting.

That's part of the reason I love doing this blog. It keeps me from the chores!