Household Snores

Really, does anyone enjoy doing housework? Like, anyone? I know there are people who actually  make a living doing housework, like maids and housekeepers and such, and maybe it’s not quite so horrible when you are getting paid to do it. (Still, cleaning the house when it’s your own dirt and doing is bad enough, I can’t imagine how much someone would have to pay me to do it for someone else. I work up an incredible head of steam of resentment and hatred when I clean up after my own family, and I LIKE them.) 

Like everyone, I have some things I don’t mind doing, and some things that I hate with the white hot heat of a thousands suns:

Chores I Loathe:

Cleaning the bathrooms. This one I hate the very, very most. Maybe it’s because the bathrooms are the highest maintenance and most disgusting part of the house, but cleaning the bathrooms is my number one hated chore. There’s just SO MUCH to clean! And all the damn time, it never ends!  I am very lucky that the Mister doesn’t mind it as much as I do, and he takes care of it.

Cleaning the closets: I hate cleaning the closets because of all the decisions you have to make. If all it entailed was taking everything out and putting everything back in, I wouldn’t mind so much, but no, you have to take everything out, and then DECIDE what goes back in. And there’s always way too much to put back in. It’s like you never really did anything when you are finished.

Cleaning windows: you wipe and wipe and wipe and they are never ever, really clean. Just cleanish.

Washing and drying lettuce: this isn’t the worst job in the world, but I loathe it. I always end up with water all over the counter and bits of lettuce clogging the drain. It seems to take forever.

Drying the dishes: I will happily wash dishes, but I hate drying them. Why spend your time doing what nature will do for you?

Emptying the dishwasher: how lucky and I to even have a dishwasher? Very lucky. And you would think I would be much more amiable about only having to empty the thing, but I feel like it’s the most boring, interminable job on the planet. Once I timed myself doing it, to really see how long it took and it was 7 minutes! I couldn’t believe it! What a crybaby I am! But it’s 7  minutes of pure torture.

Cleaning the fridge: There is always about 6  containers in the back of the fridge that have been there probably since the last time I cleaned the fridge, and whatever is in those containers has evolved into something so foul and revolting that it’s easier to just keep the lids on them and not clean the fridge. Also, this is a cold job, and deeply unpleasant in the winter.

Folding and putting away laundry: in a perfect hell, they will play rap music, serve me blue cheese and liver, and make me pair up ten thousand pairs of white socks, each pair with a tiny but significant feature that distinguishes it from the other the other white socks. 

Chores I Don’t Mind

Grocery shopping I actually quite like grocery shopping. I know lots of people just hate it, but I get a kick out of seeing what’s new, what deals I can find and deciding what I’m going to get to eat next. I’m also lucky in that I don’t have to do  my grocery shopping on Saturdays, which would dampen my enthusiasm mightily.

Cooking: I do almost all the cooking here at Chez Loudshoes, and that’s perfectly fine with me. She who cooks decides  the menu. And I like my own cooking, so the work is rewarding.

Ironing: Ironing is rather mindless, satisfying work….running hot metal over clean clothes, smoothing out wrinkles and making everything look nice, with hardly any effort. And it smells nice.

Changing the sheets: again, a chore that really doesn’t take much time, but has a huge payoff. Sliding into clean sheets, particularly ones that have dried on the line is thoroughly gratifying.Plus, the cat helps, and that's always fun.

Vacuuming: Vacuuming is pretty easy to do, and again, a huge payoff. Any room looks SO much better after it’s been vacuumed. And this job has the advantage of pissing the cat off like no other.

Then there are the Chores I Don’t Even Bother Doing:

Vacuum under furniture: why bother. I will vacuum when I re-arrange the furniture. Or move out.

Dusting: If anyone in my house was allergic to dust, I’m afraid they would just have to die or live somewhere else. 

Polish silverware: I have some silver, probably given to me as a wedding gift. I have never used it, because I would have to polish it. I would rather eat with chopsticks than polish silver.

Clean behind the stove/fridge: I know Martha Stewart says I should do this every few months, but seriously, can’t see it, won’t clean it.

Cleaning baseboards. Seriously, if you are my friend and you are looking at my baseboards, we are now not friends.

There’s always something I’d rather be doing than housework, but at least the bare minimum gets done, even if I do swear a blue streak when I’m doing it. 

Eating Down the House

We have entered the phase of vacation preparations called "Eating Down the House", which means that we have to make do with what is here, and not buy anything new to eat this week. Otherwise, I will come home to a fridge full of slimy, furry lumps of yuck, that smell so bad the cat needs therapy.

It's not so bad in the beginning, we can make very nice dinners out of what we've got. By the end of the week, it's getting a bit more challenging. But by today, two days before we go, it's just awful....tonight I have to make dinner out of two beets, a rather dodgy tomato, some leftover Fettucine Alfredo and molasses. Toby is getting nervous, because he knows his tuna stash is next on the menu.

Thing 2 complained that there is nothing to eat in the house, and I replied "I know!
That's why we are getting out of here!"

I have a secret to tell you: I've been trying to save money on groceries (so I can spend it in France!!) and so the rest of my family doesn't know it, but we've been eating down the house for weeks! They just thought I was serving terrible food!

Now, I know full well that cheap food does not mean bad food, far from it; it's not all lobster and steak at Chez Loudshoes usually anyway. But we have been eating a lot of pasta and beans the last month or two, and I think they might be on to me. The Mister asked if we could have something with "real meat" in it sometime soon.

I think he is referring to the last batch of chili I made a few weeks ago. (Chili is one of Thing 2's and the Mister's favorites, and although I can take it or leave it, it is pretty easy to make in the crock pot and the leftovers are easy to re-package and sell as a whole different meal somewhere down the line. )
I put in some leftover quinoa I had cooked up earlier in the week. Quinoa is a grain, sort of rice-like, that is supposed to be a miracle of nutrition and the current darling of the health-food disciples. I like it because it's filling and cheap, and I can make a salad for lunch out of it in about 10 minutes flat.
Anyway, it has bit of chew to it, and since I had about a cup leftover sitting in the fridge, I plopped that in the chili.....who's going to notice?
Well, quinoa has a distinctive little white "C" shaped bit in it, that does not disappear when you put it in chili. The Mister came upstairs from eating his lunch at work and asked if I had put anything new in this batch, and I confessed that I had tried to stretch it a bit with the quinoa. He said he thought it might have had little worms in it. But, and here's the bit I really like, he kept eating it anyway. Even though he thought it was full of little white worms.
I swear to God, that man will truly eat anything.

At some point before that, I tried to make another crock-pot meal called "Chili Mac" which is sort of a cross between chili and macaroni and cheese. Again, cheap, filling and right up my family's oh-so-sophisticated alley. It didn't turn out quite as the cookbook promised; it was a bit gloppier than expected and not terribly tasty. The Mister ate two bowls of it and froze the rest for lunches, having christened it "BARFY" for identification purposes.
Undaunted, I tried an Indian inspired crock-pot dish called "Dal", which is lentils and coconut milk and spices served over rice....again, cheap and filling and sounds like it could be good. Again, not so much....a bit loose and bland, this was christened "INDIAN BARFY" and frozen for future use.
And yes, we've eaten the rest of those, too.
Beggars can't be choosers.

A Better Door Than A Window

We got some new windows in our house last month, to replace the original windows which rattled like maracas during a northwest wind, and required brute strength and a good head of steam to open in the humidity. The new windows were expensive, as most home improvements are, and decidedly unsexy; like a new roof (which we got last fall) it's a heap of money that will elicit no groans of envy or gladden your heart or make you sigh with satisfaction. But they needed to be done. (We still have two big windows to do, but that will have to wait until next year, when I can stomach spending thousands of dollars on something that is no fun at all.)

Naturally, after dropping a wad of dough on windows, the Mister decided that new doors was exactly what we needed next! I had no freaking idea that doors were so incredibly extortionate, but I guess they do perform the rather important function of keeping random people out of your house, so maybe they are worth it after all. (Unlike shower curtains. Can someone explain to me why shower curtains cost a bajillion dollars? All they do is keep the water from splashing on the floor; it's not like they have complicated engineering or fine Corinthian leather seats.) I knew you could buy doors, but I had no idea they could run into the thousands of dollars. And plus, you have to buy a handle! I assumed they came with handles, but NO! you have to go out and get one as well. (When we bought our first house, I was gobsmacked that houses did not come with garbage cans, you had to supply those yourself. And we had no mailbox, either, we had to go out and get one of those too. Who knew?)

The Mister thought he could probably install the door himself, to cut down on the costs, uttering the words that chill my very soul: "How hard can it be?"

He started putting in the front door around 11 yesterday morning and finished at around 10 last night. The thing with putting on a front door is that you have to make sure you have all the stuff you need to do it, because it's not like you can run to the store to get anything in the middle of it....because you have no door in the house. This presents a problem until one of your children comes home from school to stay in the doorless house while you run to Home Depot. Also? When a big thunderstorm comes up, it presents a bit of a problem when you have a huge gaping hole in your house and no way to keep the rain out. AND, you can't stop installing a door until the door is all the way in, because if you want to go to bed, you had better be able to close and lock said door.

It was quite an undertaking, but he did it, saving us thousands of dollars, which we may have to now spend on his blood pressure medication. It's a lovely door; it has a window, so we get more light in the front hall, and I can see who's out there before I actually open it.

I think the back door can wait until we get the other windows.

Labour Day

Today is Labour Day, so I laboured.
For months the freezer room in the basement has been getting on my nerves; it is the catch-all for everything that doesn't have a place to go in the house. Slowly, it was filling up to the point where there was a path from the door to the freezer, and every surface was full of junk. I hated it.
Today was the day. I hate cleaning and organizing, I just hate it. I envy people who love that sort of thing, and who live in clutter-free houses every day, with people who actually throw things away. But I live in this house, and that means I have to clean it.

Yesterday I cleaned out the freezer, which is not a job I enjoy, but has to be done every six months whether it needs it or not. I defrosted it too, I didn't just take out all the peas that had escaped and the freezer jam I made in 2006. I was astonished at how much more room there was when I took out the 4 inches of ice along the sides. Note to self: using a blow-drier to defrost the freezer is an excellent idea.
Today I cleaned out the freezer room: 4 bags for Good Will and 4 bags for the garbage man. Somehow, with all that out, the shelves still appear to be full. How does that happen?

I was on a roll of sorts, so I cleaned out the three drawers in the kitchen that didn't close any more. I guess I really don't need 3 lemon reamers and a bag of twist ties. I tossed out instruction manuals to appliances I don't have any more, and a bunch of cookie cutters that never get used because no one can figure out what they are supposed to be the shape of. (Most of them look like bags of potatoes, and at least one of them looked like Richard Nixon.) Really, I can live a full and rich life without those things.

Then I cleaned out another drawer, a bookshelf and the laundry room. Turns out cleaning and organizing isn't my problem, it's getting started that is.

By the end of my day, I was seriously considering renting a dumpster tomorrow, and starting on the garage. (Big Liver Girl got a dumpster rented for her this summer, and it came on her wedding anniversary. I think that would be the best anniversary present ever, even if she didn't even consider putting her husband in it.)

This evening I have spent wandering around and admiring my work. The Mister made appropriate noises, even though he could happily live in squalor without even noticing. The kids wondered if I threw out anything "important". (The answer? Yes, a Hannah Montana sticker album, and an origami kit that we once tried that was so complicated we thought it might be a third-year engineering exam posing as a craft. Also, a poster of American First Ladies I got from Kelly for Christmas once. All very important.)

Tomorrow the kids get back to school. Then I can really get to the purging, while they aren't here to stop me. They may come home to a perfectly empty house.
I can dream, can't I?

Back

I'm not sure which I like better, the week spent at the cottage, or the coming home from the cottage.

We came home yesterday from our annual holiday on Lake Huron. We've been going to the cottage since Thing 2 was only 18 months old, and it's become a real punctuation mark in our lives; the girls don't remember a summer when we didn't go to the cottage, and I always feel like the pictures I get of the kids there stand as tangible markers to their growing up.

And I do love that week away. Apart from the break from work and routine, I love seamless quality to our days there. We have no tv and no computers, and I get a delicious feeling of being completely out of the loop for that week. I usually buy a newspaper every couple of days, just so I know what day it is. And I read and nap and walk and watch movies with impunity; there are no closets to be cleaned, no files to organize, no bathrooms to paint and no laundry to be folded. It is guilt-free, enforced relaxation.

Coming home is just as wonderful. By the end of the week up there, I am dying for my own kitchen, my own bathroom and my own bed. I revel in being able to watch the news, pet the cat and have the dishwasher do the work. (My God, the dishes at the cottage! Every time I'd clear the sink out, it would fill up again in about 3 minutes! Who knew four people could use so many forks??? I come home with an entirely new appreciation for the 19th century housewife.)

This year I did something so wonderfully brilliant that I think I should get some sort of award for it....I cleaned the house thoroughly and perfectly before I went away. (That also had a lot to do with the fact that we had someone housesitting for us , and nothing galvanizes me like pride and the idea that she would tell everyone at work what a filthy hovel I enhabit.) I even put clean sheets on my bed and fresh towels in the ensuite. I cannot tell you what a phenomenally excellent feeling it was to walk into a clean house, after a week spent with bugs and sand and a decidedly lackidasical approach to personal hygeine. And to slide into clean sheets after a long, hot shower was possiblly the most blissful experience of my entire life. (And I know from blissful, I've had epidurals.)

Today I am doing laundry (piles and piles and piles of it) and puttering in the garden and surfing the net and generally enjoying putting my life back on again. And maybe I'll clean a closet, just for the novelty of it.

Home Sweet Home

The Loudshoes family is going to a cottage for a few days, and we are lucky enough to have a house sitter for the duration. (One of the nice things about working with so many young people who make very little money is that lots of them live with their parents, so there is no shortage of people who are dying to get out of the house and stay at our place for a while.) Our lovely assistant, Summer, has agreed to look after the Loudshoes estate for the week. She normally lives in a small town about 45 minutes away, and I think she is just excited at the novelty of living in the big city, as well as being able to sleep in until 7:30 on a work day.

Anyway, she came by this morning to get a key and a tour and all. And it struck me as all kinds of strange to try and explain your life and your house to someone else. (And weirder still to try and have it all explained to you.) There's all kinds of things that you live with every day, and don't think anything of, and then when someone else comes into your house, you find yourself realizing what a Dr. Seuss existence you really have.

For instance, there's the dishwasher that works much better if you give it a good thumping with your left knee when you close it. The window in the dining room that the handle comes right off if your use it even slightly the wrong way. (The handle goes right back on, but you will need superhuman strength to open the window then.) We never close the kitchen window, because it is awkward and stiff and doesn't open much more than 6 inches, and even though it presents a perfect opportunity for a thief to get in the house, I'm willing to take the chance because he would have to be about 89 pounds to fit through that thing.
Our television set-up is ridiculous in the extreme, and I am going to have to type up a tutorial for the poor girl if she is ever to get all the systems aligned. We have no less than FIVE remotes for the tv/DVD/Wii/PVR set up in the family room, and you practically need a PhD in engineering to get a movie playing. It would be easier to negotiate peace in the Middle East than to organize all the bits and pieces required to record "Canada's Next Top Model" on the PVR. I don't even bother trying to watch that thing, most of the time.
We have a keyless entry on the back door, but a traditional lock on the front door, with a key. But you have to make sure that the lock underneath the deadbolt isn't locked, or else your key will do you no good at all. The shower in the girl's bathroom leaks at the one corner, so you have to put down a towel, lest you create Lake Loudshoes in there. The tv in the kitchen is operated by the same remote as the one in our bedroom, so you have to stand at the dining room door and point the remote at the bedroom if you want to change the channel.
You get the idea.

I'm sure everyone's house is like that; full of idiosyncracies and foibles that slowly accumulate, so that the occupants don't even realize what they deal with every day. When you have to account for them to someone else, however, you begin to think you live in a bad sit-com.

I did mention to Summer that Toby will be off on holidays of his own; my mother and father will be looking after him while we are away, since Toby does NOT like being left alone in the house for extended lengths of time, and punishes the furniture severely. She was very happy not to have to deal with the Tuna Seeking Feline of Six A.M. Sleeping in until 7:30 may be the only upside to her staying here.