Rating housework on a scale from 1 to 20.
If I had to rate housework on a scale’ from 1 to 20, with number 1 being my favorite pastime and number 20 being tantrum time. I would rate it at 19. that’s a little worse than 18 which is going to the dentist to have an impacted wisdom tooth removed, and a little better than number 20, ironing.
Housework has to be the most thankless job in the world. You can spend $2.50 and drive your car through the robocar wash, and sure as shootin’ someone will say,“Gee, your car looks nice.” but you can spend six hours of slave labor, cleaning the house, and nobody says a word.
I don’t think most families really care what the house looks like anyway, if they did, they wouldn’t try to set records, seeing who could mess it up the fastest.
Have you ever noticed that kids are never hungry for peanut butter and toast until after the kitchen is cleaned up, and it never fails. Two minutes after you vacuum the family room carpet, they get hungry for the crumbs in the bottom of the potato chip package. I bet there is enough food trapped in our family room furniture to feed a starving child in Biafra for a year. I don’t think I have ever seen Amy and “Clark” sit and watch TV without doing a hand to mouth routine with something crummy.
Also, have you noticed, that you can clean and polish and have everything looking pretty good and you haven’t got a friend in the world. but the day you say, “To heck with it. I don’t feel like cleaning up this mess today.” the phone rings, and you find out you have lots of friends and they are all coming to visit. I’ve set a few world records in my day. shoving things in drawers and closets and dusting the top of the furniture, to give the impression that the house is at least livable. I’ve been surprised by visitors too. when this happens, the only hope is that nobody has to walk down the hall to the bathroom.
Now you might remember that I rated ironing as number 20 on my scale. I personally do not believe in ironing. If it needs ironing, I don’t buy it and by chance I make a mistake and buy something that has to be ironed, it ends up in the famous ironing basket.
When we moved from Longmont to Greeley. I gave the ironing basket away, but it really didn’t matter very much, because the kids had outgrown all the clothes anyway, and Paul’s shirts had been in there so long, he had forget- ten all about them.
I’ve always thought that if God had meant for me to iron, he would have made my hand hot, with a dial on top that said wool, cotton or linen and an ironing board would miraculously appear from heaven.
There is one thing for sure. when I’m dead and gone and my kids are recalling memories of their mother they will never say,. “remember. dear old mom, standing at that ironing board for hours. just to make our clothes look slick.” What they might say is. “do you remember the days, dear old mom ran through the shopping centers for hours, frantically looking for no-iron clothes for us to wear.”
Thank goodness there has been a great revolution in clothes in the last year. Clothing manufacturers have gotten smart enough to say the wrinkled look is IN. Ha! It has been IN at our house for years.
