Tag Archives: housework

What the ants have taught me

Posted on May 10, 2011 | 15 comments

It happens every spring, though I always forget that fact until it happens again. (I call this SAD: Seasonal Amnesic Disorder.) The weather gets nice, the spring rains begin, and the ants appear in the house. Usually it’s the largish black ones, the ones that make me worry that maybe they really are carpenter ants. (They’re never actually that large; I just get paranoid at times.) They drive us crazy for a few weeks, and one day they disappear as mysteriously as they appeared.

This year, the annual invasion was by tiny, black Argentine ants, also known as sugar ants. Even the smallest of crumbs isn’t too small to be overlooked by these tireless little scavengers, and it takes a horde of them to break up and carry off anything bigger than a poppy seed. The upshot? My counters have been immaculate since the beginning of April! I wash dishes as soon as they are dirtied; I even wipe behind canisters and small appliances EVERY DAY!

Sometime in the last week, the ants pretty much disappeared, without warning or fanfare or apparent reason. I see the occasional scout ant here or there, but I make a point of wiping around it when I do. I don’t wish it any harm; in fact, I’m rather grateful to it and its cohorts for reforming my habits a bit. Knowing what a lousy housekeeper I am, the universe has found a way to get at least a little spring cleaning out of me by means of a few (thousand) humble ants.

15 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , ,

Pardon my lack of enthusiasm

Posted on November 19, 2010 | 2 comments

Recently a friend asked me if I was getting excited about our upcoming vacation. I was a little surprised to be asked that; why should I get excited? What is there about a family vacation to get excited about? I shrugged my shoulders and said, “No.” He looked puzzled and mildly disappointed.

In reflecting on this exchange, which was clearly unsatisfying for both of us, I recognized some fundamental differences in our perspectives. As the primary breadwinner in his household, my friend holds down a full-time job at a place of business; when he goes on vacation, he doesn’t have to go to work. Whatever he does on vacation, it’s guaranteed to be entirely different from his usual daily/weekly routine.

When I go on vacation, my job comes with me. I still have to work, doing what I do every day. The setting and circumstances are different, but I’m still responsible for making sure people get up, get dressed, and get where they’re going on time. I still have to plan meals, even if I don’t prepare them or clean up after them. I still have to coordinate transportation and schedules, and I still have to enforce rules and arbitrate disputes.

This isn’t a bad thing; a change of scenery can be refreshing, as can a change in routine. But it hardly qualifies as “getting away from it all” when you bring most of it with you, now, does it?



2 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

All’s fair

Posted on September 7, 2009 | 3 comments

Today I ran afoul of that strange and arcane system siblings use to make certain things are “fair.” Around our house there are weekly chores that are usually done on the weekend: cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming, etc. This being a long (holiday) weekend, we played all day Saturday and Sunday, which means we left the weekly chores until today. We actually played most of today, too, until a late afternoon trip to the grocery store heralded the end of holiday time and our return to the ordinary time of our daily lives.

After putting away the groceries, I reminded the children of their chores and went to put out the garbage and recycling for tomorrow’s collection. Resolved to get several large, empty cardboard boxes into the recycling bin, I was hacking away at them with my matte knife when my son came out and announced that he needed me to come because the vacuum cleaner wasn’t working.

“Can it wait for a few minutes?” I asked, slashing with gusto. The answer was no; he had to do his vacuuming right now.

“Can you do something else for — oh, I don’t know — ten minutes?” I tried again more pointedly. Couldn’t he see that it was unwise to exasperate someone armed with such a dangerous implement?

“I can’t think of anything,” he replied. I rolled my eyes, then was struck with inspiration.

“I know,” I said brightly, “you can bring out the bag of recycling from the kitchen.” He shook his head.

“I took out the garbage this morning,” he explained, adding that his sister would therefore have to take out the recycling. Irritated, I nearly launched into a lethal rant about how it didn’t matter who did what and he should do it just because it needed to be done. I caught myself, however, remembering that such things are matters of extreme gravity among siblings.

“Fine,” I said. “Send her out.” A few minutes later my daughter came out with the bag of kitchen recycling. She cheerfully dumped it into the bin and hopped on her skateboard.

“Whoa there,” I caught her at the top of the driveway. “Are you finished with your chores?”

“Everything but vacuuming,” was the glib reply.

“Finish your chores first, then you can play until supper,” I admonished. She explained that she couldn’t because it was her brother’s turn to vacuum first. Never mind that we have two vacuum cleaners (one of them an ancient but very functional heirloom Electrolux); it simply wasn’t her turn.

“You better have everything done before supper,” I said darkly.

“I will!” she replied as she sailed down the driveway and banked onto the sidewalk. I put the recycling bin on the curb, then went to rescue my son so the wheels of domestic industry could start turning once again. (Turned out the vacuum wasn’t plugged in.)

3 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

Untapped potential

Posted on July 12, 2009 | Leave a comment

The new cat had decided she likes to sharpen her claws on the box springs of my bed. To discourage this, I applied the extra-wide double-sided tape that pet stores sell for this purpose. (Several chairs in our living room sport similar decoration because of the claw-sharpening proclivities of one of our other cats.) Although Fluffy has stopped clawing the bed, now she licks the tape. Very weird, but I don’t see how it can damage the box springs.

The other day my daughter wanted to watch TV in our room, but I told her no because I had washed the sheets and hadn’t put them back on the bed yet. She offered to do it for me if I would let her watch TV in the bedroom. My mama didn’t raise no fool, so I agreed. When I finally crawled in for the night, it was late and I was grateful that I didn’t have to make the bed first. I did note, however, that the edge of the sheet closest to the head of the bed had a narrow hem rather than the wide hem that indicates the top edge.

When I investigated in the morning, I found not only that my daughter had placed the wide-hemmed top of the sheet at the foot of the bed, but that she had also failed to tuck it in. My SO moves quite a lot in his sleep, so I was surprised that the sheet had stayed in place. I found out why when I tried to lift the end of the sheet to tuck it in: it was firmly stuck to the tape on the box springs. I laughed so hard I sat down on the floor, then decided to leave it because I liked the way it looked.

I’ve been considering the untapped interior design potential of double-sided tape: dust ruffles, place mats, table runners, antimacassars — the sky’s the limit!

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , ,

It’s the motivation, stupid

Posted on May 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

As I puttered in the yard yesterday morning, a utility worker was making the rounds of the neighborhood, reading meters.

“Your yard looks really nice,” he said. “I wish I had that kind of motivation.”

I thanked him and then tried to minimize the compliment with self-deprecating humor: “I’d much rather work in the yard than clean my house!” We both laughed; he went on his way and I went back to weeding.

The truth of that remark stuck with me, though. Why do I feel that way? What is it about yard work that appeals to me, so much more strongly than house work?

A few things came to mind that were true but didn’t seem to carry enough weight. I love being outdoors. I love plants and critters, invertebrate as well as vertebrate. I love doing the stuff that yard work entails: digging, pruning, weeding. I also love doing laundry, though, and putting things away where they belong. What else, I wondered?

Yard work is very satisfying because the results are so tangible: the grass looks neatly trimmed, the beds are a pattern of flowers rather than a riot of weeds. But house work produces tangible results, too: dirt is removed, clutter becomes harmonious and orderly, questionable odors disappear.

But the results are so fleeting, I lamented. You clean up the kitchen from one meal and a couple hours later you start preparing the next meal. You wash all the clothes in the house and at the end of each day there’s a new pile of dirty clothes. When you mow the lawn, it looks nice for a week or more. When you weed, it takes a while for new weeds to grow.

And there it was — my “Aha!” moment. House work seems like such drudgery because the next mess happens almost as soon as its predecessor is cleaned up. Or worse yet, the next mess is in progress before you finish cleaning up the current mess. With yard work, you stand back at the end of the day and survey your accomplishments, knowing that you’ll get to savor it every time you pass through the yard for the next few days. With house work, you stand back at the end of the day and think, I get to do this all over again tomorrow.

Excuse me, Mr. DeMille, but what is my motivation in this scene?

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged ,

Domicilium perfectum nervosum

Posted on April 8, 2009 | Leave a comment

“There is no real need to do housework. After a few years it doesn’t get any worse.” — Quentin Crisp

I know people whose houses are so spotless that the board of health could issue a certificate for them to serve food off their floors. Most of these people are compulsive cleaners and seem to partake in a form of distorted thinking usually associated with anorexia nervosa: no matter how immaculate their houses are, they always see dirt. They own a carpet shampooer because they use it more frequently than most people use a vacuum cleaner; they scrub the grout on their tile floors with toothbrushes.

Not everyone who cleans thoroughly and frequently suffers from some kind of mental imbalance — it is possible to be naturally neat and perfectly healthy. I suspect, however, that a large number of neatniks suffer, undiagnosed, from some sort of anxiety disorder, which they try to keep at bay by cleaning. The rest of the world may be going to hell in a handbasket, but the physical conditions within the four walls of their homes are completely under control.

As with eating disorders, the causal factors leading to cleaning disorders are many and complex, but it seems certain that social attitudes play an important role. Aphorisms such as “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” coupled with middle- and upper-class housekeeping expectations, probably account for a large part of this social component. Stir in a little insecurity, some low self-esteem, and a couple issues of Better Homes and Gardens, and you’ve got the ideal conditions for a full-blown case of House Beautiful Syndrome.

I don’t seem to suffer from this disorder, which I view as both a blessing and a curse. On the blessing side, I don’t have a lot of anxiety, although I do experience the pressures of social attitudes and expectations. On the curse side, my house NEVER resembles anything found in a magazine and I don’t feel all that driven to do something about it. I keep the Quentin Crisp quote on my refrigerator as a reminder of the two-edged nature of this state of precarious mental health: while it’s true that clutter and grime reach a certain equilibrium after a few years, I’m fairly certain that point of balance is well beyond the bounds of my own tolerance.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged ,