Tuesday, August 21, 2007

I hate housework

A partial view of my kitchen
Of all of the things I have to do as a stay at home mom, I think the worst thing is housework.

I DESPISE doing dishes.

I LOATH washing laundry.

Sweeping makes me SICK.

Vacuuming makes me want to VOMIT.

Waxing makes me WEARY.

Polishing?? Oh, PLEASE.

That said: Thanks, God, for providing me with a hard-working husband who works 2 jobs so that I can stay home. Thanks, God, for allowing us to buy this great house to live in. Thanks, God, for giving me 5 beautiful, healthy (albeit SLOPPY) kids to love (and clean up after). Thanks, God, for the healthy body you have given me, so I CAN do housework. Thanks, God, that I live in the era of automatic washers, gas dryers, dishwashers, microwaves and hot water heaters! Thanks, God, that I don't have to haul water from a river and heat it up on a wood stove so that I can wash mountains of dishes by hand. Thanks, God, that we don't have to share bathwater when we take a bath at night.

Looking at how hard pioneer women had it, I guess housework these days isn't so bad after all. Every now and then it's good to remember how relatively easy I have it, and to say thanks to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for allowing lowly little me such a fantastic life.

Happy people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of what they have! (A great quote I heard one day, which I try to remember when I start feeling like I "deserve" more...)

4 comments:

icancarryallthebagsandthebabiestoo said...

I imagine what my kitchen looks like now. And then I imagine I had THREE MORE CHILDREN!!!!!!

How do you do it?

I really like how open your house looks.

I love doing dishes. Really. It's one of the things in the house that I really enjoy. I like doing dishes and mopping the floor. I do not, under most circumstances, enjoy scrubbing bathrooms or doing the laundry. Mostly, I dislike folding the laundry and putting it away. Generally, when the laundry is folded, it remains in laundry baskets sitting on the floor of my closet until it's been sifted through day after day and becomes a huge pile and we can't remember what's clean and what's dirty so we have to do it all over again.

Sigh.

But my sink never has dishes. I like to scrub it with bleach.

I think I may need to seek out a happy medium.

Julie said...

Thanks!!
Trust me, I did some serious cleaning before that picture was taken...lol. I like to give the appearance that I can keep up with the housework with all these kids, but more often than not there are piles of laundry hidden in our bedroom and stacks of junk mail sitting on the island in the kitchen as well. Right now my kitchen floor has several sticky spots (my 12 year old son gave Puckey a cup of lemonade yesterday which she proceeded to sprinkle all over the place) Just when I think I've gotten all the spots, I find another one. I guess I should just break down and mop the whole floor...ugh.

You're so lucky. I wish I had a closet - I envy you!! Our house was originally a 3 bedroom, but we've turned the family room into the master bedroom. It's awesome, but we currently do not have a closet. My clothes are on one of those portable clothes racks. One of these days my husband will get to that part of the "honey do" list, I guess.

The kitchen of my house is what first made me want to buy it. I found it online (with no pictures of the interior), so I drove out here to check it out. I wasn't even sure if anyone lived here, but I peeked in the living room window and saw it was empty, so I proceeded to peek in all the windows I could. (I'm only 5'1", so it was a bit of a challenge...) The house had a sale pending, but it fell through and my family and I bought it and moved in on Dec 23 2006. I wanted so badly to be here for Christmas that we moved in without most of our furniture. We did have a tree, thought! Gotta have priorities, right?

Back to the original topic...I pretty much hate any and all housework. My favorite thing of all chores is mowing the lawn. Probably because it's usually about a week before I need to do it again, and the kids don't come behind me and mess up what I've just done!! :-)

icancarryallthebagsandthebabiestoo said...

I feel like I kick my butt to get things clean, but nothing is ever clean enough. It's terrible.

My kitchen floor makes me crazy.

You could always get an armoir to put those clothes in. Also, a little hope chest is nice for sweaters and stuff. We still have a changing table in my room. I use the bottom two shelves for a bookshelf for the girls, and the top on for all the piles of crap that accumulate when I don't have time to put them away. They are HIGH.

Julie said...

I've thought about going the armoire route, but we can't really afford a nice one. My husband is an amateur woodworker, and he's REALLY into craftsmanship, so we can't just go to Wal-Mart and buy a cheap "put it together yourself" kind. (I have been tempted a couple of times, though!!)

I'm considering buying some of those closet organizing shelving units and just mounting them to the wall where the closet will (eventually) be. There's a recess in the room and it's where my clothes rack currenty resides, as well as my husband's dresser and some other stuff I haven't figured out what to do with yet. I think the only thing I miss about where we used to live was that we had a pretty good sized walk in closet in our master suite. But given how much better our house is, and the fact that we have a huge yard and lots more space, I was willing to sacrifice the closet. :) We have the "piles" too, but it's mostly because I hate putting laundry away. Ande is supposed to be making me a hope chest one of these days (right after he finishes the beautiful solid oak crib he started making for Puckey when she was 6 months old...lol)