Housework on a cloudy gray Saturday

Today is Saturday, so housework is on the agenda. Last weekend we were in Florida and the week before that was the pig roast, both of which were considerably more fun. After all that excitement realizing I'll be spending this weekend with only the mop and the vacuum for company is a bit of a bummer.

Housework has never been my favorite thing and I've never been particularly good at it, either. Somehow, even after a whole day of nothing but cleaning, the place still manages to look like a parade just went through only hours later. With only two of us living here, I can never seem to pinpoint just how that happens, yet it never fails.

I don't know about you, but the laundry particularly gets under my skin. It seems no matter how often I do it, there is always more waiting. Somehow it also seems that whenever I have a load to go in, Evan's already beat me to the machine. It doesn't seem to matter which day of the week or what time of the day I pick, somehow he's always gotten there before me. I'm starting to think he must be getting up in the middle of the night to fill the machine without me noticing.

Looking at the clutter around here, I am beginning to understand why my parents asked for a dumpster for their 40th anniversary. They didn't want a cruise or a big party. Instead, they very happily threw away their lives together, as they phrased it. When the dumpster was full, they posed in front of it with a water-stained framed photo of them at their wedding that they'd found in the basement, and then they gleefully threw that in, too!

I have to say, throwing stuff out can be very liberating. I've already told my boss that I will be taking some time off in October, just for that purpose. I've got the same six boxes of something in my crawl space, stuff that I've been carrying around through the last two or three moves. If it hasn't come out of the box in the five years I've lived here, and if I can't, in fact, remember what is in the box, then I think it is time for it to go.

Now I think I've procrastinated enough, so I'm off to go wrestle with whatever it is in the fridge that is making that horrible smell.