On Housekeeping

I have a confession to make. I like to vacuum.  I do. I like the way the wheels from the vacuum leave tracks across my carpet, and I like the way that the carpet feels after it has been vacuumed.  It actually might feel just the same as it did before, but in my mind I know it is clean. And I like that. I also like to vacuum because it is so loud, and when I turn it off the house seems really quiet and, for some reason, more peaceful than before.

I also like to wash bed sheets. I like to strip them off my bed and bundle them up to carry to the washer. Maybe its because its a huge load to carry but it weighs next to nothing, so I pretend that I’m really strong and that is why it is easy to carry. I don’t know, I only know I’m weird like that.  I also like the way the sheets smell when I fling them out across the bed, all warm and fresh from the dryer.  I don’t like moving them from the washer to the dryer though, because they are always tangled up and heavy with water.  They never want to cooperate with me and simply move over like the rest of the laundry.  Do not confuse this with making the bed. I don’t like to make my bed. It seems like a waste of time because I’m just going to crawl right back in to  it again in a few hours. I do like the way a bed looks when it is made, but I would much rather climb back into a bed that is still positioned just the way I left it when I was last in the middle of a deep REM cycle.

I hate dusting. Maybe I have to many knick-knacks or maybe I’m just lazy but I just really hate to dust.

However, I like to spray my wooden dining room table with lemon scented furniture spray.  It is an old, antique table and the wood is really dry. When I rub the spray into the wood with my rag, I can see it literally being absorbed by the dry table.  The spray makes it smooth and shiny. Plus it smells good too.

I hate to fold laundry. I want to invent a dryer that will dry the clothes, then fold them into nice neat piles.  It takes me about seven days to complete one load of laundry (sheets being the exception to that rule). Day 1: washing machine. Day 2(sometimes evening of day one, maybe): dryer. Day 3: nothing, the laundry just sits in the dryer. Day 4: dryer again, because now they’re wrinkled. Day 5: oops, I forgot them again. Oh well, into the laundry basket and upstairs to my bedroom. Day 6: the pile in the laundry basket gets smaller, because I usually choose to wear something that is on top of the pile. Day 7: I fold the laundry. But this takes about 2 hours, because I will walk away for even the smallest distraction. Folding laundry is boring to me. I don’t know why.

I wash my windows every other year, whether they need it or not. It’s amazing to me how bright the sunshine always is on the day I decide to wash the windows. I almost need sunglasses inside the house. Now that I have a glass door and a dog that likes to lick it, it gets washed every other month. Well, I’ve only had him for two months, so maybe it will get washed more often. Maybe not.

Sweeping, mopping, and toilet/bathtub scrubbing I am ambivalent towards. Therefore they get done often enough that I don’t feel icky, but certainly not often enough to make me feel like a Martha Stewart of housecleaning. If you come over and use my bathroom and the bathtub is a little stained, or your socks get a little dusty on the bottom just know that I was probably going to get to that within the next day or so, but I just hadn’t made the effort yet. But I was going to. Really, I was.

I probably chose to vacuum instead.