climbing mt. everest for a glass of chocolate milk

i do not profess to be the best house cleaner you ever met on the internet. i mostly run my household by the saying "clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy"...merry maids meets "cheaper by the dozen". totally me.

did i just give the impression that i'm a slob? because i'm totally not a slob...i just have 7 people living in one house and like every mother knows, there is a revolving "to do" list that just carries over from day to day to day to day. at my house, things like the baseboards and tile grout and the oven never quite make it to the top of the list.

and i know they don't make it to the top of your list, either, no matter how many of you post on facebook things like "organized the garage, defrosted the freezer, ironed 27 white shirts, and chopped down a cherry tree! now for some homemade pot pie with fresh garden vegetables for lunch!" i don't believe it for a minute...but i do start to feel bad about my june cleaverness.

so anyways, i have 2 big weaknesses when it comes to homemaking skills. i'm going to lay it all out for you here, keeping it real so you don't come away from my post feeling bad about your own june cleaverness. i'm nice like that.

dishes. and laundry.

as far as the dishes go...i've just always hated doing dishes. my family didn't get a dishwasher until i was a sophomore in high school, so i spent 4.7 years of my childhood washing dishes by hand. those are years i can never get back, years i could have been playing paper dolls or learning to do a back flip or lip syncing to whitney houston. a robbed childhood leads to a resentful adulthood, and that is why i don't like doing dishes.

never mind that now that i have a dishwasher the whole task could be completed in under 10 minutes. that is irrelevant. it's the principle, ya know? i always put it off as long as possible, then i break down and do it and tell myself "self, that wasn't bad at all. why in the bleep did you wait so long?" and then i answer myself and say "self, you are right. and there's no need for vulgar language. it's not bad at all. from now on, i will do the dishes as i go, all day long. easy peasy."

i'm a liar. i don't do it as i go all day long, and then i repeat the above paragraph. every.single.night. dishes are my enemy, poor things. i feel about dishes the way the rest of my family feels about putting a roll of toilet paper on the holder.

and the laundry. sheesh. i actually enjoy washing clothes. i can keep up with that one, no problem. at any given time, you can find a mountain of clean clothing piled nigh to the ceiling in my bedroom. washing clothes is not my problem.

it's the folding. and the putting away. as far as i'm concerned, folding and putting away clean laundry could best be described as climbing mt. everest with paper cuts on every finger and getting a root canal at the summit. if i were julie andrews and i were singing about my favorite things, i would never ever mention mt. everest or paper cuts or a root canal.

i realize it's unfortunate that my least-favorite household tasks are also considered daily maintenance and therefore not optional. have no fear, i have compensated in other areas, so as to balance out the june cleaver within. i am really good at bathing my children every night, and i never ever ever run out of nesquik.

now hiring: dishwasher and laundry folder. compensation: a tall glass of chocolate milk and no judgments about the pretzels and chip clips on your pantry floor.