Wednesday, August 31, 2011

How do you feel about housework?

I often blog about a single subject, which is fine. But since this blog is also my own personal journal/family history, I sometimes think I should blog about a typical day and even just what's on my mind. Today is Wednesday which is the day after Tuesday, which means it's the day after the day I work at the Sanctuary. Which means it's a catch up day. Editing, bill paying, mailing, shopping, blogging and HOUSEWORK. Ok, I've never done it before, but I'm gonna ramble on a little about housework.
 
Ever-present, never-ending housework. I've given a lot of thought to this subject over the 14+ years that I've been married and primarily in charge of keeping the house, and gone through many stages of feelings about it: denial, anger, acceptance, ambivalence, resentment, anger, satisfaction, denial.... etc. I've also come to believe, that while organizational skills and housekeeping skills can be learned and improved upon, being a truly excellent housekeeper is an innate characteristics and you either got it or - as in my case - you don't got it.

I have DEFINITELY learned to be more organized over the years and I really do enjoy a clean house. But it just always seems like there are more worthwhile things to do with my time.

Oh well, I'll keep working on it. And I have a theory - everyone has a different tolerance point for an  acceptable level of clean. I can ignore a certain amount of clutter, dishes and dirty floors and then all of a sudden, I've hit my limit. I have friends who can't stand the tiniest bit of clutter, or the minutest amount of dirt, but then I also have friends who can tolerate years worth of clutter piles and weeks worth of food crusted on dirty dishes. I would have to say, on a slob scale from 1 to 10 (1 being OCD Buckingham palace clean and 10 being "Hoarders") I'm somewhere around a 4 - the cleanest my house ever is: 2, the messiest: 6 - 6 is my absolute max tolerance level. The average is somewhere around a 4.  Except for the dishes and laundry, which I keep up on pretty well, I would have to say my overall style of housekeeping is "let it build up- while I work, edit, do horse stuff, etc. - until  I can't stand it anymore and then go on a big cleaning/purging binge" or, "someone's coming to stay so freak out at the kids and get in a housework bootcamp workout".

As I was typing this, I took a look at my desk and realized that the state of my desk is pretty indicative of the overall state of my life.


A whole bunch of "to-dos" and miscellaneous multi-tasking. Funny.

I'm glad I blogged about this stuff - it's cathartic.

How do you feel about housework? What's your cleaning style?

    2 comments:

    katie said...

    House work is never ending and sometimes it can be so frustrating! But I also love it when it is all clean! My kids are getting better and better at getting their chores done the way I like it to be. And I know as they get older it will get better :)

    Queenie said...

    Hahaha...liked this post. Well your whole blog actually. Fred is too cute. I also have two cats that are moving to live with us in India any day now! Anyway I wrote a really funny post 2 days ago about a day in the life of the new "post move to India" me and thought you might appreciate it...I'm joining your site and thought if you liked mine you might want to do the same. anyhow....Look forward to more stories!