Cleaning house

Since becoming a SAHM, even if only temporarily, I’ve taken on more of the household chores.

Q. fought me on this, because he felt that he should still be doing his share, but I won in the end, because I didn’t want him to spend his miniscule amounts of free time on the weekends cleaning. Lately he’s been spending much of his free time trying out recipes from his make-ahead cookbook, so I have less cooking to do during the week, but given he loves to cook, and I don’t get much pleasure out of it, that suits me fine.

So Q. cooks on the weekends, and I cook during the week (mostly) and the rest of the day-to-day cleaning is my responsibility.

I am surely not the only mother to admit that sometimes having to vacuum is a nice break. E. can entertain himself for an hour if I am cleaning or cooking, but apparently can’t manage it for five minutes if I’m trying to do something just for myself (hence the importance of his daily ‘quiet time’- it’s for me, not him). And so I enjoy being left alone to my thoughts, even if I’m pushing a vacuum while I do it.

I am, I will freely admit, not a great housekeeper. I manage to vacuum weekly, and clean the bathrooms weekly, but I had to write “mop floors” into my monthly to-do lists to make sure I would actually mop them 12 times this year. Dusting is done sporadically. Our windows are a mess.

But boy am I good at laundry.

I am a machine when it comes to laundry. I do all of it- my clothes, E.’s clothes, Q.’s clothes, sheets, towels- on Saturday mornings (plus one load on Friday nights if E. has swimming and I have to clean his swimmers and his towel right away). Usually by the time lunch is over the last load is in the dryer and everything that needs to be hung up to dry is hanging and all the other loads are folded and clean sheets are back on the beds and clean towels are back in the bathrooms.

I just chip away at it around our usual Saturday morning routine- breakfast, going to the farmer’s market, hanging out, getting lunch ready.

And I LOVE doing it. I love taking piles and piles of dirty clothes and linens and turning them into baskets of neatly folded clean clothes ready to be put away.

I take enormous satisfaction from doing this job, and I doubt I will ever relinquish it to Q. once I’m working again and we return to a more balanced division of household labour. (He used to do his own laundry, but it’s much more efficient if I do it all at once.)

But I don’t really enjoy vacuuming, and I hate hate hate cleaning bathrooms.

What about you? What household chores (if any) do you take pride in and enjoy doing well? Which ones are necessary evils?

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