Housework? Me?

I hate housework. There are so many other things I could be doing. Fun things. And you have to keep doing it over and over. I have organized drawers, cabinets and closets trying to avoid getting the vacuum cleaner out and running it.

And I have a mother that loves to clean! To me that is just crazy. She always told Dad that she saved him a fortune in psychiatry bills when he bought her "the Kirby". It was huge, heavy and loud. When she couldn't stand the noise any more and the stress level shot up, she hauled out the vacuum cleaner and went over the whole house. By the time she was done, she was calm, the house (which was already spotless) was clean and she was ready to deal with anything else. When the vacuum came out, the rest of us would make ourselves scarce until she was done.

By the time I am done vacuuming, shoving and jerking the thing back and forth muttering, "I hate this, I hate this," I am so irritated and sweaty that I can't find much satisfaction in it. I know I need an attitude adjustment, but it would probably take some heavy duty hypnosis or drugs or something to do that.

My mother always said, "Now don't you feel good having a clean house?" Ok, after I take a shower and sit down and relax after doing all that, I do feel good. But, I would feel so much better coming home to a house that was already clean without having to go through all that to get to that point. Unfortunately, I could never justify spending the money to do that so I never got to experience that particular pleasure.

I have spent my life living in piles. The mail is piled on the kitchen table, books are piled next to my recliner, knitting is piled next to my rocking chair, ironing is piled on the daybed. As long as I live like that I know exactly where everything is. But the minute I start cleaning, I lose everything.

I have a file cabinet that I have tried to keep paperwork in and up-to-date. When I go through and file it, I lable the files with perfectly obvious words that will trigger my memory the next time I look for that info. I don't understand why, down the road a few months or years when I am trying to locate that info, I can't find it anywhere. I try every logical word I can think of that would relate to the info. Much later, when I do locate it, I wonder why I ever thought that the word I used would ever trigger anything, let alone the memory of that info.

Part of the house cleaning problem resolved itself when the rest of the family moved away from here. Hum, I wonder if they are trying to tell me something? Anyway, with them all three hours away, I only have to "mother clean" when Mother is coming. Otherwise it is a lick and a promise and low lights to hide the dust. After making a surprise visit once, my folks now tell me two weeks in advance when they are coming. They learned what dust bunnies are and I'm not talking the little bit of lint you might find in their house. I still don't know how those dust bunnies got in the bathtub.