How Housework Saved My Life ...

Yah, that is a bit of Lakhi that has
untidily got into the frame of the pic

ROFLMAO! That got your attention. 

(Well, I would be rolling on the floor if it was clean enough; I don't acksherly clean it very often - wink.) 

I don't like doing so much housework that it becomes drudgery and I don't like being the only one who does it. However, I do like housework.

Mmm 123RF photos - lemme 
know when you start providing 
domestic help as well as pix. 

The downside to working in your own home is it can feel lonely going round with only the hoover for company. Nowadays, though, I go on the board where we are all logging on from our offices and kitchens. I say: “Hey, cubs! Get your shirt off and carry my laundry out for me. Shake those buns, hun!” <Snerk>. 'N we have a laugh 'n they feel like their boring job is not so bad 'n I feel like my kitchen is not so lonely so everything is cushty (wink).

I've never been good at keeping my home tidy and clean. Maybe I just have this silly MILFy dream of being someone who does. Ah, those pretty aprons with the ruffles! I am sure the guys would prefer me to be a proper li’l housewife, not some slut slipping on the ruffles for a wriggle 'n a giggle (wink).

I like housework although I feel kinda weird when I get to go in the homes of mommy moms who really keep their house clean and tidy. (I once went to look at a room in a flat which was so damn clean I was the only piece of fluff on the carpet. I wasn't much surprised not to get that room.) 

My colleagues are like, “Oh gosh when I have to write a paper my home is so clean cuz I procrastinate by cleaning.” ROFLMAO! If I put off my writing to clean, I would never get anything done. I just make space on the kitchen table, enough for my netbook, a cup of tea and a cream slice, and I am in my own head for however long it takes. I won't even notice whatever is scuzzing around the floor until I realise it's ten minutes to school pick up time and I better run out the door. 

These are the things I like about housework. 

Metro say here they finally invented a paint 
that means they can finish the bridge! And a 
hoover that finishes my housework? Hullo hullo! 
Where have those clever inventor guys gone?

It's never finished. You never get to a point where you can say: There, the whole place is spick and span, my job is done and I can roll around on the floor laughing. Housework is like the Forth Bridge. If it's finished, it's time to start again. (Not that mine is ever anywhere near finished.) 

Uh? you are saying. Surely that's one of the big hates about housework. I can never get on top of the damn stuff! I can never relax and say: "OK hooray! Finito with the feather duster!" 

Chill out, baby. If it is never going to be finished, what's the big rush with trying to get it finished? It will still be there to do tomorrow so you should really consider if it's worth bothering with today. You go:
~ "Cooking breakfast - yes, cuz otherwise the hungry howling is too much to bear.”
~ “Clearing breakfast dishes into dishwasher - yes, cuz it doesn't take long and the place looks a lot better when it's done.”
~ “Cleaning floor - nope, cuz the sun is shining and I wanna go to the beach. We will not be here all day to look at the floor; I will do it tonight (maybe) then it will be clean tomorrow when we will get a chance to admire it.” 

'Zis ees a special French smiley.

You should bear in mind too that if you clean irregularly and less often, it has greater impact. When your surfaces are always gleaming, people don't come in going: "Wow! Let me put my sunglasses on - your kitchen looks amazing." They go: "Oh it's business as usual, let me leave my mucky snack on the counter and make a smear." 

So, secondly, housework is fun cuz it's not hard to do. It does not take a PhD to clean a toilet. (Although this insight seems to be worth turning into a large sign with flashing lights round it in our house: Yup, that's right, Dr. MILF does not actually have to be the one to do all the wipey dusting stuff! There are men who do it too; your oversize ego will not lead to you toppling over into the dustbin when you empty the dustpan.) 

I dunno about you, but I spend my time wrestling simultaneously with writing about gender as performative in the heterosexual matrix for picky snickety overconfident academical types and writing clear easily understood gentle critique for my lovely tremulously underconfident students. (Ah, the little flowers, shivering hopefully in the balmy spring breezes of Level 1 undergraduate studies.) So I welcome a task where I just have to go: sweepy sweepy sweepy, oh let me think for a nanosecond - if I sweep into that corner with the little brush not the big broom it will get the dust out easier. Hey, I have achieved something in my day! The floor is (a bit) clean. And I solved world peace while doing it cuz I could think about something else while sweeping. 

From Michael Yamashita Inc

Regularly cleaning is such a good meditative practice that the monks of Ryoan-ji go every day into their stone garden and rake it carefully into beautiful patterns. Every day they allow everyone-else to tramp tramp tramp and kick up the gravel into untidy scurfs. Then they rake it carefully tidy again. 

'Course, they go 'n do it as some high religious ritual cum art form and everyone in the world goes to admire it and write papers about what it means while someone-else cleans their floor . 

TBH I think it is acksherly more in the proper Zen spirit to humbly and quietly sweep your l'il ole kitchen floor clean every day, not making such a silly fuss about it - sheesh! If you wish, you may shave your head and wear a special monk kind of robe to do it in. Personally, I like to wear a frilly apron. 

From The Apron Store. 

No, just a frilly apron. 

'Smatteroffact, I think it is totally Zen to spend a little time every day doing something which is about tending to your own wellbeing humbly and small. Keeping yourself and your li'l ole homestead nice is about considering yourself in the world about you (Satori). I am a bit hard on myself about this cuz I sometimes think, living in a mess means my life is in a mess. I would like my life to be a bit clean and tidy - and I'm not talking the living room carpet here. (Hey, I chose it to not show the bits of chocolate and mud and biscuit and cat sick so it is totally unreasonable to tramp red paint into it!) 

So, yah. Nowadays, cleaning my house does not get me sssstressssed (except when the Baron comes back and says one of those things of incredible tact and insight like he does). I like housework. I feel like I am on my way to balancing a little bit of input with enough order in my head and in my home. Right now my home is suffering a kitten infestation so I don't worry about it too much but when they are gone (apart from the one we are keeping and the one we are keeping for Swiss Army wife till she is ready for it and the one with the poorly eye if its new owner does not want it after all), I shall start off again. I started my Zen housework thang with the laundry. It was all kinda earnest and sweet but I realise now it was not the right place. A journey starts with a single step and the proper step on which to start your journey to Nirvana through housework is the kitchen sink.