Tuesday, April 22, 2008

I need a house elf

My Grandma and I were talking one day about house cleaning. We discovered that we each have one area of cleaning that must be done each day to make us feel like we can stand the sight of our houses. Hers is bed making. Mine is dishes. Now, this is not to say that the dishes in my house are always done or that I don't have a perpetual pile of dishes making the sink useless for any of its other intended purposes. What it means is, if I have done the dishes, but nothing else that day, I can live with the state of my home. If I haven't done the dishes, I never really feel that my house is clean.

Karma, or my husband and kids, knowing this about me, must think it is a cruel joke to provide me with an endless supply of dirty dishes. Karma also kows that my obsession with the dishes makes it nearly impossible to relinquish my hold on the dishes-loading job and I can not enlist the children to help me. They do it all wrong. The plates must face North. They don't get that. Karma is cruel.

Now I know that a family of six will certainly dirty its share of dishes, but I really think my family must set some kind of dirty dishes record. For example, by 2:30 p.m. on any given day, there will not be a single clean piece of silverwear in the house. That is 16 spoons, 16 forks, 8 butter knives, and an assorment of serving pieces that have all been used that day. How is this humanly possible? Who needs a butter knife more than once a day? On one particular day in the not too distant past, I placed 11 kid-sized cups in the dishwasher. I ONLY HAVE 4 KIDS! Apparently they are too fancy to use the same cup twice, so each drink of water during the day deserves its own cup.

I am of the opinion that I should not have to do the dishes more than once per day, but this is slowly ceasing to an option. I am saddened. All this dish washing cuts into my laziness time. And my hands are getting dry and scaley. How bad a person would it make me if I decided to go all Dixie? Is that environmentally responsible? Then again, I would definitely use less water. Hmmm....what a quandary.

3 comments:

Mindurs said...

I was just thinking the same thing about dishes as I was loading the dishwasher for the second time today. Blah! Thanks for the laugh!

Alicia said...

Jen,
I understand! There are only 2 of us and I swear we never have clean dishes! (how hard is it to out your dirty dishes in the dishwasher..he's 25 for goodness sake!) Every once in awhile I will buy paper plates, plastic utensils and plastic cups when I'm feeling extra lazy. I don't know what I'm going to do when we have the baby! PAPER AND PLASTIC ALL AROUND! Also I am with you on the loading! Nobody ever loads my dishes the right way..is it really THAT hard? You can fit a lot more in the dishwasher if you just load it right! (ok I think I just blogged in your blog comments..sorry..lol) Love you! Come over soon!

Salty Gal said...

i'm really bad at dishes too...my mom came over one day and said she was embarrased that i was her daughter b/c i had so many dishes in my sink :) she sat down and "taught" me how to do dishes again...sounds funny, but i've maintained a fairly clean and empty sink for about 2 weeks now.