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10 April 2008
Are there chores that make you feel virtuous?→[More:] For me, it's getting the oil changed in the car, sweeping the front walk, and doing dishes. (All of which I've done within the last 24 hours, so I'm pretty much insufferable now.)
I tend to feel a bit virtuous whenever I get a bunch of chores done. Partly because I hate doing chores and don't like spending perfectly good free time on them, and so tend to put them off and feel bad about putting them off.
So eventually I just kind of snap and start cleaning and feel like kind of a badass afterward for manning up and getting it done.
I generally feel pretty smug after doing any chore, because I don't do them that often. That said, I guess mine would be mowing the lawn, because I have the nicest lawn on the block and keeping it that way is a good way of thumbing my nose at my lazy neighbors.
Most chores, because cleaning is one of my least favorite activities.
The big ones that make me feel superior are:
Cleaning behind the fridge and stove
Washing my pottery and baskets that I keep above the kitchen cabinets
Washing windows
Scrubbing shower stalls
Cleaning my screened-in back porch
Organizing junk drawers, crowded pantries, etc.
If I get off my ass and do a big chore and see my husband lounging on the computer I can get extra smug, and think, "you lazy bastard, what have YOU done today?" ;-)
I just spent an hour sorting the kitchen shelves: wiping down the dusty jars of pasta and grains, organizing like with like, moving shelves for best use of space.
Suddenly, we have quite a lot of shelf space in our tiny dollhouse kitchen. I feel quite smug.
I am gonna confess something here: I am one smug bitch about my clean-ass house. I am one of those people who cleans constantly, and because I live in a big house, I have lots to keep clean. I am that person who multitasks whilst on the phone, polishing the wood or wiping down the baseboards. I thrill in the gloss of my wood floors and shiny mirrors. I keep a wide array of high end cleaning products at my disposal, ready to marshal into use at a moment's notice.
I clean best when I am harassed and stressed out, which is frequent, with a teenager in the house and two insane sisters and their insane antics.
Yep. I'm a cleaner.
Virtuous? I love changing my furnace filters, because that feels like a 'man's job'.
I feel decent when I've accomplished a chore that I put off: emptying compost (which involves climbing an ice mountain this time of year), taking empties to recycling, washing sheets on guest beds (they're clean now, you can come over!) or anything that takes more than like the 10-15 minutes that something like cleaning the bathroom does. But I'm a real slacker and I feel virtuous when I bother to floss, so what do I know?
Here's the way I see it: real honest-to-gawd life-altering accomplishments are few and far between, so claiming small victories, when and wherever they crop up, is important. I'm probably not gonna cure cancer, but hey, I took out the trash! If that makes me a sad little man, so be it.
I feel virtuous only when I've accomplished a small but noticeable task. The big major cleaning shit just leaves me feeling exhausted and filthy. So I'm happy with the small things, and put off the big things.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
