I once read on a bumper sticker that “Housework Makes You Ugly!”
As I looked around this morning and saw the disarray in my house, my thought was that I evidently had taken that message to heart.
How can everything in the house seem to need to be done at the same time? Housework is something I never minded before in my life, but it now seems as though it is never finished. I will give you an example of how quickly my house can get messed up.
Sunday was the Willoughby reunion and in preparation to take dishes to the reunion, I completely tore my house up in one morning. I am so much slower than I used to be so when I finally got my dishes cooked and ready to take, it was time for me to get myself ready so I had to leave some of my tidying up until I returned.
After all the preparation that morning, an incident happened that really rankled my nerves, since I had spent all morning preparing dishes. As we were going through the meal line, I noticed my green beans with potatoes and my squash casserole dishes were missing from the line. I couldn’t quite figure this out since I had questioned my husband if he had gotten everything out of the car before the meal and he said yes.
I had also packed food in, and he said he would get the rest out. So, I decided I must have just forgotten and left them at home. Guess who was in the doghouse when we returned to the car to go home and there the dishes were in the cardboard box I had put them in to keep them from spilling into the car?
When I got home, I was totally exhausted and decided I would lie down to rest a minute and then get up and clean up the messy kitchen.
Well, my intentions were good, but I fell sound asleep and didn’t wake up until about two hours later. The kitchen mess did get cleaned up that evening, but as I took a glance around the room, it seemed everything else needed a good cleaning. That is what has brought me to this column.
I firmly believe to keep a house spotlessly clean, a woman would never get to sit down. Where does she draw the line? Can she enjoy life a little, or does she need to spend life trying to clean, clean, clean? The only thing I can keep completely up is my laundry. I think I have a fetish with doing laundry. I can’t stand to see a full hamper of dirty clothes.
It seems I kept my house straighter when my daughters were home and I worked full-time. I think when you do not have a full-time job, it is easier to put things off until the next day. But the truth is, I have just gotten lazier and it is a whole lot more fun to go out to eat with a friend if the opportunity arises. Besides that, it could really turn out to be a fact that housework makes you ugly, and I don’t want to take any chances.
For the first time in my life, I have fingernails that you can actually see hanging over my fingers. I think this is proof of why my house looks a little unkempt to me.
Oh well, I would love to try to do something about this, but my daughter-in-law and I are going to lunch and it will just have to wait a little longer.
I hope all of you have a wonderful and safe Fourth of July celebration. We are the luckiest people in the world to live in these United States of America.
