Domestically-Challenged

Hi, my name is Eliz­a­beth and I’m Domes­ti­cally Chal­lenged.  I don’t like house­work and I’m not par­tic­u­larly good at it.  I am, how­ever, par­tic­u­larly adept at avoid­ing it.

Although my inad­e­quate domes­tic capa­bil­i­ties have caused a great deal of guilt in the past, until now I’ve always been able to ratio­nal­ize and down­play the sig­nif­i­cance of my hand­i­cap.  After all, I had more impor­tant things to do — like be a supe­rior mother, and later, a supe­rior home­school­ing mother.  Prob­lem is, hav­ing been made redun­dant in my two jobs (sec­re­tary and home-educator) at the same time, my one remain­ing respon­si­bil­ity is house­keep­ing.  Though I pre­fer the term “home making.”

[aside:  Hmm, I’m going to have to think about that.…  House­keeper.  No that’s not what I am at all.  I’m a home-maker, a mother, and a wife.  I am respon­si­ble for mak­ing our house a home; a place of warmth, secu­rity, and shel­ter filled with embrac­ing love and comfort.]

There’s a part of me that finds it com­pletely and totally unac­cept­able to be lousy at the one thing I’m sup­posed to do.  On this, the sec­ond day of hav­ing no chil­dren at home to care for or edu­cate and hav­ing no wage-paying cler­i­cal duties to per­form, the real­ity of my abysmal domes­tic skills has sud­denly hit full-force.  It’s as if  there’s a gigan­tic bright pur­ple and lime-green 200lb gorilla in the cor­ner.  No, make that every cor­ner.  Every sin­gle cor­ner of my house has a reminder of my fail­ings piled or stacked or stuffed into it.

For exam­ple, behind me in the base­ment, bas­kets and chairs are piled to over­flow­ing with clean laun­dry.  The sorter is over­flow­ing with dirty laun­dry.  It looks like the laun­dry mon­ster threw up all over the room.  Upstairs in the kitchen, the dish­washer is full of clean dishes, the coun­ters are full of dirty dishes, and the table is buried under a moun­tain of mail, paper­work, and newspapers.

I could go on but it would just serve to depress me and dis­gust you.

I’m deter­mined to take this oppor­tu­nity and learn to over­come my hand­i­cap.  Even though I’m a natural-born pro­cras­ti­nat­ing, dis­or­ga­nized slob, I believe I can learn to com­pen­sate.  After all, I’m an intel­li­gent, mature adult.  I can do this.

Start­ing tomor­row, right?

No, just kidding.

I’ve been think­ing about extend­ing my blog to include a Daily Doing Diary along with the Daily Dol­lar post­ings.  I’m not sure though.  That might just be another one of my doppelganger’s clever diver­sion­ary tac­tics (she’s very clever with those, you know).  But then again, it might help keep my hon­est and on-track.  I’m not going to com­mit myself until I find some­thing the works for me.

Any­way, my Doing goals for today:

1. switch out the spare mat­tress for The Son’s good mat­tress now that the whole food-poisoning episode is done and the Nature’s Mir­a­cle has worked it’s miracles;
2. clean the kitchen — which means empty the dish­washer; load the dish­washer (and run it if full); clean the coun­ters; wash all hand-wash dishes and uten­sils, dry, and put away; clean the sink; and clear off and wash the table;
3. fin­ish the kids’ school paper­work — now two days late;
4. fold and put away all of the clean laundry.

In addi­tion, I get to do the two things I want to do today — exer­cise and work on stock­ing my online store.

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