Diaries I Read:
Once upon a time, either right before I got married or right after, I read a tip in some magazine that said you should never go to bed without a spotless sink. No, it wasn�t one of those 1950s throwback articles trying to get women to glide around their spotless kitchens wearing starched aprons and smiles � it was just a general tip about how to keep your house tidy. The reasoning was that if you had a spotless sink, naturally the rest of your kitchen would be in pretty good shape, too, and you�d never end up with endless piles of dishes, pots, pans, etc. all over the place. Plus that, I think a clean kitchen leads to a clean rest of the house, too.
I thought it sounded like a pretty good idea, and early on in my marriage, even though I don�t truly believe that women should take on all cleaning responsibilities around the house, I really wanted to be a good wife who kept a nice home. Plus that, in those days, B cooked almost every night, so cleaning up afterward was my job.
For a few weeks, I did pretty well. I�d wash all the dishes, dry them, put them away, rinse out the sink, maybe even use a little Clorox, and we�d wake up the next morning to a nice, clean kitchen.
But then real life started sneaking up on us again, and I let it go for one night. Or two. And eventually I forgot about the clean sink rule. It�s not like I just left dirty dishes lying around to rot and grow mold; I just wasn�t as conscientious as I�d been in the beginning. Maybe I�d wash the pots and pans and leave them drying on the counter. Or maybe I�d just rinse off the dishes and leave them in the sink because I hadn�t emptied the dishwasher to make room for them. Or maybe I�d clean up everything except that one really greasy, caked-on pan that I�d leave in the sink overnight to soak.
Anyway, I realized last night that I am sick and tired of washing dishes. I feel like that�s all I do when I�m at home. It seems like the second I finish washing and drying and putting away dishes, I turn around and there�s another glass or plate or pan sitting there in the sink.
Part of the problem is that B basically refuses to do dishes. I originally let him get away with this because he did all the cooking and I figured it was only fair for me to do the dishes. Now that I do a lot of the cooking too, I let him get away with it because he does so many other things around the house, and I figure we�re each allowed one or two things that we don�t have to do because we can�t stand it. (Mine is vacuuming. And cleaning the toilets. B�s good at both.)
It�s one thing if B doesn�t like doing dishes. I can handle that. I can even accept that he very rarely empties the dishwasher. But it�s entirely different that he won�t even put a dirty dish into the dishwasher. I mean, it�s not that hard � you open the dishwasher, put your dish in, and close it. I even make a point to empty the clean dishes fairly promptly so he doesn�t have the excuse that the dishwasher was full.
But still, every evening when I come home from work, there�s the kitchen counter, inches away from the EMPTY dishwasher, stacked up with coffee cups, spoons, plates, glasses, and miscellaneous cooking utensils.
I called B over last night, opened the dishwasher a crack, peeked in, and said, with mock fear in my voice, �Is there a monster living in here?�
He looked at me quizzically.
I opened the door a little more, pulled out the top rack, and gingerly placed his morning coffee cup in there. �Are you afraid that something�s gonna bite you if you put your hand in here?� I asked.
I opened it the whole way and started putting his dishes in, one by one. �See how easy this is? You take the plate and stick it in,� I said, feigning amazement. �There�s even special little compartments for spoons and cups and stuff. Isn�t that neat?�
He got the point of my little charade, and even admitted how much nicer the kitchen looked with his items from the day placed inside the dishwasher. We�ll just see how things look when I get home tonight.
But I think that�s the reason I no longer feel so compelled to make sure the kitchen is spotless before I go to bed. Because after all that work, by the time I come downstairs in the morning, B�s coffee cup, spoon, and empty Splenda packets are on the counter. So is the newspaper. By the time I get home from work, evidence from the rest of his meals throughout the day is all over the kitchen. So what�s the point? I clean up the kitchen at night, revel in its cleanliness for about five minutes, and go to bed?
Despite all of this, despite the fact that my above complaint is completely justified and B SHOULD pitch in with this very simple task, I still wish that I kept my kitchen spotless all the time. I wish I kept my entire house spotless all the time. I wish I were more anal. I wish that any time somebody stopped by unannounced, the house looked great. I wish that I didn�t have to scramble around cleaning things up the hour before company arrived.
There are lots of things I wish I did that I don�t. These are things that I�ve tried really hard to do at times. Some of them I�ve even succeeded at for certain periods of my life. But none of them have really stuck and become habits. I wish that I:
� Kept my fingernails nicely manicured all the time (nothing fancy, just filed with a coat of clear nailpolish instead of all scraggly looking)
� Washed my car once a week (instead of once every three months, only when the windshield is so grimy I can�t see out of it on a sunny day)
� Took all my belongings out of my car and into the house when I got home (instead of letting gym clothes, jackets, empty water bottles, receipts, etc. pile up in my car so that having a passenger is difficult)
� Did the laundry a little bit at a time throughout the week (instead of having to do five loads every Sunday)
� Made the bed every morning (so that our bedroom actually looked decent � although that�s kind of along the same lines as the dishes; I�m never around to enjoy it if I just make it every morning and get into it every night)
� Folded and put away the laundry as soon as it was dry (so it would sit in a crumpled heap and get all wrinkled)
� Wore my retainers every night (so my teeth wouldn�t start to shift, making wearing them again painful)
� Got up early enough in the morning to run before work
� Had a nicely organized refrigerator (in which you could find things easily and didn�t have to shove things in to make them fit)
� Kept my shoes lined up neatly in my closet (on the shelves bought specifically for shoes, instead of kicking them off my feet into a big pile on the floor)
� Brushed my dog�s teeth every week (instead of, like, once a year)
� Kept my socks and underwear drawers organized and tidy (instead of just throwing everything into the drawer)
If I could only do all of these things, I am convinced that I would be a better, happier person. See, I really do strive to be anal. To be perfectly honest, sometimes I sort of envy those with obsessive-compulsive disorder. I sort of wish I had more of that. Not the kind of OCD where you lock every door three times, just the kind where every pillow on your bed has to be arranged just SO.
But I�m just not that anal. I don�t have the energy to be that anal. Maybe someday if I don�t have to be in a cubicle for nine hours a day, I�ll achieve a nice healthy level of OCD. Maybe.
Working at home - Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004
Toronto - Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004
On the way to Toronto... - Tuesday, Nov. 09, 2004
A Good Day - Monday, Nov. 08, 2004
Another letter - Thursday, Nov. 04, 2004