Why I Hate to Clean

This morning I rediscovered the reasons I hate to clean. I often fantasize that I will one day become the keeper of an immaculate house....a place for everything and everything in its place. Ha! After breakfast today, I decided to clean out the medicine cabinet in our kitchen. This is a good thing, as I've been accumulating medicine since 1975 or so, as one never knows when (s)he will need some dried up cough syrup or yellowed pills of indeterminate purpose.

As I pulled open the cabinet, I noticed that Gary had left a number of empty almond butter jars on the microwave, at my request, as I hate the way he fills them with water and leaves them soaking on the edge of the sink until I complain. I can't throw them in the recycling bin until I clean them, because who wants to send that mess to some poor soul who has to sort plastics for a living? It only took me about half an hour to clean them. (Please don't tell me there is no poor soul sorting almond butter jars, because I really hate cleaning them.)

Then I began organizing pills, checking expiration dates, and tossing old meds. As I emptied pill containers into the trash (yes, I know, one is supposed to flush old meds, but we have a septic system and I figured medication would eventually make its way to our well water. As I write, it occurs to me that human waste might be able to do the same thing, and....well, you can see that I have a tendency to veer off track. Stay tuned for another blog about our contaminated well water. And another to ponder the legality of tossing pills into the trash. Will a bear eat the trash/pills and die? Will a sanitation worker find them and sell them, with my name on the bottle, resulting in my arrest and imprisonment? Yes, I actually think these things.) Anyhow, as I was tossing things in the trash I noticed that the trash was full, so I pulled the trash and recycling bags out to empty, and realized that the bins were long past due for cleaning. I pulled the bins out, and decided to take them outside where I could use the hose to clean them.

When I went to the garage to get the hose, I noticed that there were way too many cardboard boxes waiting to be broken down for recycling, so I decided today is the day. I tore and folded my way through half of the boxes, stopping only because I filled the recycling bin. Oh, yeah, the hose. Since Gary always puts things away in illogical places, I spent nearly half an hour looking for the hose in all the illogical places before discovering that he put it in the most logical place. He is so darn inconsistent! I dragged the hose outside, hooked it up, cleaned the bins, having to stop every two minutes or so to let the dogs in/out of or out/in to the house. The hose was leaking, so my pant legs and shoes got soaked, and I tracked water and mulch into the house, which meant I had to dry and sweep the floor, and why would I only sweep one floor, I might as well do them all.

The hose. As I put the hose away in the garage, I knocked over the plastic bags and bottles that need to be returned to the grocery store, so heck, I might as well put them in the car and take them back, too. But first, I should probably finish up the cabinet reorganization, and straighten the boxes that wouldn't fit into the recycling bin, and as long as I'm taking care of things needing to be recycled, there's that stash of paper bags in the laundry room that has been annoying me for weeks, and as long as I'm dropping off recycling at the store, I might as well cram in some Christmas shopping and....

I am exhausted. And when Gary gets home tonight, he may or may not notice that I reorganized one cabinet, but either way he'll think that's all I did today.  And this is the way I clean. It's a good thing we have a real cleaner, Brenda, who comes once a week. I love you, Brenda!