I feel like I am a pretty good at keeping up with house hold chores. I vacuum regularly (although one of the main reasons I have dogs is so I don’t have to clean up all the food my toddler drops on the floor!). I keep the dishes from overflowing out of the sink, and I dust… sometimes. I only make the bed if I wash the sheets or if someone is coming over who might look in our room. My thought is: why make it if you are just going to mess it up in about 16 hours? I don’t do bathrooms; that is my husband’s job since he makes the biggest mess what with his facial hair and well–he pees standing up.
When it comes to cooking I make sure we are fed (thank you macaroni and cheese and fish sticks). I do like to bake and can make a pretty delicious strawberry cupcake with cream cheese frosting. My husband really is the cook in the family, and when he gets home at a decent time he will whip up something delicious. On the weekends you can bet he is making homemade pizza or grilling our meals.
This leaves me with the worst chore of all… LAUNDRY!
Doing the laundry is a necessary evil. Most people I know don’t enjoy it. For those of you who do, you are more than welcome to come over and tackle mine! The problem is that I don’t just hate doing laundry, I am really bad at it. It’s not that I just forget to change and fold the laundry, I usually ruin at least one piece of clothing a week, too.
During my junior high years, my mom decided I could start helping with the laundry. I had to put the clothing from the washer into the dryer. I also had the job of matching socks which is probably why I now despise doing it and make my husband pair them. In high school I began working at the local vet clinic where I did a lot of laundry. Everything was washed on hot and with bleach which is not exactly the best practice for actual human clothing.
When my husband and I first moved in together I was still doing laundry at home under my mother’s supervision. Within the first month of having my own place with my future mate, I had shrunk a couple pairs of his sweatpants and at least five sweatshirts. How was I supposed to know he never dried his sweatshirts in the dryer and that washing in warm water then throwing them in the dryer on high would result in his sweatshirts becoming my sweatshirts? I soon realized that washing everything in cold water was the way to go.
As time has passed, items are shrinking less and less but I still struggle with getting stains out of clothes. (It doesn’t help that I am really messy and my mom still won’t buy me white shirts). Sometimes it seems like my clothes come out of the wash with more stains then when they went in. Like the time I accidentally washed a tube of lipstick with the whites. My husband still makes sure I know the lipstick stains on his underwear are from my laundry mishap and not from someone else! I have also washed his wallet, rocks, lots of money, paper, Kleenexes, nails and screws, and a multitude of other random things my husband and son manage to leave in their pockets.
My newest challenge has been that my washer has started eating my clothes. This probably has to do with me over filling the washer because if I can’t fit a week and a half worth of laundry into 3 loads–colors, darks, and whites–then my entire laundry schedule is thrown for a loop and it is quite possible we will all run out of clean underwear before I get a chance to do a fourth load of laundry.
I may not be the domestic diva my mother-in-law had hoped for her youngest son but I feel I do a pretty decent job. The house is presentable, everyone is fed, bathed, and, for the most part, we have clean clothes to wear, even if they have a stain or two. And possibly a hole.
