Romantic Dinner

[Guest]

It's Friday night. (Thank you, God.)

Our family settled down for an actual home-cooked meal of spaghetti and veggies, lovely crisped bread, ice cream and fudge-striped cookies for dessert.

The best part? We all drank lemonade out of wine glasses.

Our kids thought it was very exciting and spent the meal swirling and swishing and tasting.




Little did they know - we didn't have any other clean glasses!

We haven't been home long enough in the past 3 days to do any damn dishes. (Rinsed, yes, but they're just stacked in huge piles in two sinks and part of the counter.)

(Don't tell, OK?)

 

[Guest]

That's lovely, Sarahh. I feel as if I know your family .

I do know about sinks full of dishes. I had a friend once who had to start putting the dirty ones in the oven after the sink and counter got full.

Perdita (will start using Champagne flutes for my water)

 

[shereads]

My mom used to give me Welch's grape juice in a wine glass for special occasions. It felt glamorous.

That's an excellent reason to let the dishes stay in the sink for a while.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

I do that too, every now and then.

 

[Guest]

I'm relieved everyone here doesn't think we're slobs!

(Or if you do, you're far too polite to say it!)

The dishwasher is filled and running at this very moment and we'll be able to catch up over the weekend.

But I'm thinking we really need to do things like that more often. Maybe we should invest in some fairly inexpensive wine glasses. The kids won't notice the difference, and if they break - who cares?

(AND - I'm also looking into the oven as an additional dirty dish hideaway - you know, just in case the pastor drops by?)

 

[Guest]

Sarahh, I've been an awful housekeeper all my life but when my boys were young I loved having an excuse. I used to use my dining room as the catchall for everything and would somehow clean it out every Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas when I'd host the family dinners.

My last husband once complained about my messiness and I told him he knew I was like that when he married me and that I hoped he hadn't done so for a housekeeper. Of course I knew his sudden complaint was an avoidance re. his out-of-the-blue sexual dysfunction.

Perdita

 

[Guest]

Sarahh, I am just relieved to know that I am not the only one who lets dishes pile up. You would think, to hear my hubby talk, that all wives (except for me of course) were excellent house keepers. He seems to forget that it's impossible to keep a house tidy with four small children.

CM

 

[Guest]

Perdita - your last hubby sounds like a very foolish man.

I am glad to hear we're not the only ones who have to do the big clean for all those major holiday events!

Honestly, I think at times we have to search forever for certain items (bills, receipts, etc.). We have to examine the contents of boxes we've filled from the piles of paper on the dining room table. But we need to be archeologists, using stratified layers to locate things (oh - this magazine is dated October? OK, so the bill we need should be close by . . .)

 

[Guest]

CM - 4 children? Bless your heart!

I can barely keep my chin above water with 2!



(If he complains, tell him to get his butt in the kitchen and rattle them pots & pans!)

 

[MathGirl]

I hope I can overcome obsessive neatness before I have children. Can't live or work in disorder. Sure wish I could.
MG
Ps. In case anyone's forgotten, I'm also cute as a button.
Pps. Who the hell started that CaaB shit?

 

[Dirt Man]

I've met some of the most beautiful women in the world who were absolute pigs in their own domiciles. And I'm talking about chicken bones skattered atop a kitchen table for no less than 5 days here. Did I sleep with her? Hell no! God only knows what was crawling around in her bed under those filthy covers. And no, she didn't have any children. In fact she lived in a three room apartment that was fully furnished with a dishwasher, and had washers, and dryers in the laundery room that didn't require any money to be fed into a coin slot.

Now I can understand not doing the dishes right away, or even having a few dirty dishes in the sink. But I've never lived in a pig sty, and I wasn't about to spend the night in one either. Funny thing was that she was a bartender by profession, and kept her work area immaculate.

Now I don't expect my wife to do all of the household chores any more than she should expect me to do them all. True, she does tend to clutter up the dinning room with all of her paper work, but then every couple of weeks she clears it all up again. In any case, we have an agreement, that if you make the mess, then you clean it up. This agreement however doesn't include kitchen duties, because whoever cooks, the other one cleans up afterwards. Everything else gets a lick and a promise.

As Always
I Am the
Dirt Man

 

[Guest]

We were sane before our children,

. . . and much neater, too.

The clutter just happens. And we had to decide what was most important to us.

Do you come home and clean your house top to bottom or do you take the kids to the Y to swim for 2 hours?

Do you do the dishes or do you help your daughter with her homework?

Do you vacuum the carpet or do you play Mario 3 on the Gameboy link with your son?

My husband and I decided a long time ago that housework could wait. (Of course we don't wait on the essential things - changing bed sheets, changing the litter boxes, rinsing the dishes before we toss 'em in the sink, cleaning the bathroom, taking out the trash, etc.) Ick.

And we usually manage to catch up on the other things over the weekend.

BUT - we don't stress about it. It isn't worth it to stress. But to see the joy on my 5-year-old son's face as he kicks my ass in Mario? Well, that's all worth it!

 

[tolyk]

Sarahh, while I was visiting my children over the christmas season, my ex explained to me her system of house cleaning as a single mother with 2 kids. She has one main thing she does each day, and just standard tidying up and the dishes (sometimes rinsing like you said) It helps her to not fall behind on everything and have to get into a hectic rush and be all stressed out on her free time to try and get it cleaned up.

The fact that she lives in government housing also doesn't help, since they can send in surprise inspections at any time. She has to keep it tidy all the time. She still spends plenty of time iwth the kids, but does great with her system of cleaning.

 

[Black Tulip]

Thank you all for making me feel less of a failure. I am a terrible housekeeper.
I used to have the excuse of being a single mum with a job and a study, but not any more. The study is finished and the kid is grown up.
It's still a mess.

I just hate cleaning house, so I do it about four times a year big time and like Sarah, only the essentials every weekend.

 

[oggbashan]

I am not the world's tidest person. Neither is my wife. But food preparation areas and bathrooms are clean. The rest of the house is a jumble with books and papers everywhere.

From time to time we have a blitz and the books and papers get moved into neat piles. That lasts about a week.

Twice in my life I have been involved in a major clean up at high speed.

The first was when I was in my 20s. I used to play cards in a Friday night group. The action was fierce for little money. Usually we met at the pub, went for an Indian meal and then to someone's parents' house. One night all locations were unavailable. One casual member of the group volunteered his girlfriend's flat. He rang her, she agreed and six of us went to her flat.

It was dark, we had drunk enough to be uncritical. There was a table and chairs - what else did we need?

After a couple of hours I had lost my playing money so I volunteered to make coffee. We always had coffee, powdered milk (ugh) and sugar with the packs of cards. I went to the kitchen of the flat and met a disaster zone. I couldn't see the sink for dirty crockery and pans. We needed cups or mugs so I started to wash up everything.

After half an hour I had nearly finished the crockery and was starting on the saucepans etc. when a friend also was cleaned out. He joined me in clearing up.

We produced the coffee an hour after I left the game. My friend and I returned to the kitchen. We cleaned the cooker, the work surfaces, the floor, washed the net curtains on the window and door and sorted the piles of dirty washing into loads for the coin-op launderette. We were working very quietly so as not to disturb the card players nor the 'brats' as the boyfriend described them.

At seven am the 'girlfriend' emerged from the bedroom to prepare the baby's feed. She burst into tears at the sight of a clean kitchen. My friend and I were on our hands and knees cleaning out the kitchen cupboards that were very dirty but empty of anything edible except the baby's feed.

My friend went out to buy food for breakfast - subsidised by the card players. Once a cooked breakfast had been provided for the six card players, the girlfriend and the three toddlers, my friend washed up while I took seven machine loads of washing to the launderette. I left the loads there for the staff to process, went to the nearest Bank (still open on Saturday mornings then) and drew some cash to buy cleaning materials.

The card school broke up at 10am when the pubs opened. My friend and I stayed in the flat all day. By Saturday evening we had cleaned every room, washed all the curtains, windows, floors, got every item of clothing belonging to the girlfriend and her children washed, dried and ironed by the launderette and had stocked the kitchen cupboards with basic food for a week.

The girlfriend chucked the boyfriend out that evening. He had been her boyfriend for a week since his previous SO had ditched him for being a lazy work-shy b******. Her four children had different fathers, all of whom had left as soon as she became pregnant.

My friend and I visited her (together) several times over the next few months to help her keep the flat clean. The Welfare services became involved and eventually she met and married a reasonable man. We attended her wedding but she didn't want to keep up any sort of relationship with us because we reminded her of the worst time in her life. She had been suffering with post natal depression at the time.

The second time occurred when my same friend was moving house. As frequently happens in the UK things went wrong on the day of the move. We were moving everything in a hired van. His wife was eight months pregnant and was (and is) extremely houseproud. The new house should have been vacated at 10 am. Because of delays it wasn't empty until 6pm. She was cleaning the old house so that it would be sparkling for the new owners.

On the first trip I drove the van with my friend as a passenger. When we entered the house there was a dreadful smell. Where the cooker had been in the kitchen spattered grease was caked three inches thick on the wall. Our shoes stuck to the greasy floor. That wasn't the cause of the smell. In the small bedroom there was a three foot high pile of discarded nappies. The carpet was soaked in urine and faeces. Wriggling across it were maggots. The door had been left open and blowflies were buzzing at every window.

We shovelled the nappies into bin liners, ripped up the carpet and threw it into the back garden. I went to a supermarket to buy cleaning materials. We spent three hours cleaning the house but had to leave one bedroom. His wife wasn't believing the stories she was being told about the delay. We were piling the furniture on the drive while the house was cleaned and fumigated as best we could with household fly sprays.

When she finally arrived she was so tired after scrubbing her old house from top to bottom that she didn't notice our inexpert cleaning. She went straight to bed.

The next morning she yelled at us because the house was so dirty. Only then did her husband tell her what we had done the day before. She didn't believe him until he took her into the garden and showed her the maggoty carpet. He offered to open a bin liner of nappies but she declined and was sick over the carpet.

They lived in that house for only nine months before moving again. She cleaned every day but couldn't get the idea out of her head that the house had been soiled beyond cleaning.

Og

 

[Guest]

Ogg, having been though postpartum depression your first story brought me to tears. What fine young men you and your chum were.

After my sons' father moved out I could barely cope for a while. I was glad he was gone, my non-coping had to do with being poor and alone with two young boys. My kitchen was such a mess (though no maggots). One Saturday my brother and his girlfriend came over and scrubbed every wall, the floor and even the ceiling. It inspired me enough to paint the room, put up new shelves and poster of Nijinksy and make it become my favourite room. I spent many hours in my kitchen writing then, preferring it to my usual study.

bless you, and my brother still,

Perdita

 

[A7inchPhildo]

Oh god you and gauch both have the cutie valentines thing going!

Personally I like a home that has a bit of a lived in feeling. It makes it feel comfortable. (not a trash dump) clean/sanitary but used. Sometimes I miss that.

As I live alone now I have become a compulsive clean freak. More than I will admit. But most people feel uncomfortable in my house including my own mother. As a fear of messing something up not scared of being hurt.

No I do not number the blades of grass in the yard! As long as they are within 1/4" in height of each other they are fine.

 

[oggbashan]

What fine young men you and your chum were.

bless you, and my brother still,

Perdita

What are brothers for if not to help out?