How I Feel About Housework

How I Feel About Housework

If you would have asked me as a child how I felt about housework, I would have declared (emphatically!) that I hated it! My Mother was a bit of a perfectionist and so we were taught to be thorough. That took so much of the fun out of it! Our favorite style of doing housework was putting on an ABBA tape, dancing around and goofing off. Of course, not much work actually got done that way!

 Dusting and vacuuming weren’t so bad. Even though we lived on a gravel road, we didn’t have that many knick-knacks; it was mainly wiping off the book shelves and windowsills. We had a large floor space, it wasn’t too cluttered, so that isn’t what we hated doing.

We did dread doing the bathrooms! Scrubbing out toilets is horribly gross to young girls! But, that only happened once every week to ten days, so even that wasn’t the worst job. The title of the worst job was reserved for the nightly chore of washing dishes.

Though we begged for a dishwasher to help us wash, my Dad told my sister and I that we both had two dishwashers, one on the end of each arm! So, off to the sink and drain rack each night we went.

Mom insisted on scalding hot water. She would check it, too, to make sure it was hot enough to pass her approval. No lukewarm water allowed in our sinks! She taught us to run our fingers over the surface of the dishes to make sure that it was not only sight clean, but touch clean as well.

I vowed I would never make myself be so demanding about housework when I grew up. Alas! The old proverb about training up a child in the way they should go is true. As the years went by, I suddenly realized I didn’t want my dishes to be less than spotless. I didn’t want a dirty bathroom or dusty shelves. Not only had I acclimated to housework, I had actually grown to thrive on it!

I find now that I can take pride in the beauty of a clean house. I am not obsessive about cleaning, but I do find the pleasure is in the reward of its own job well done. Not only do I like caring for my house and making a welcoming environment for my family and friends, but I have begun training my children to help me clean now.

Of course, they are at the balking and obstinate phase of (resisting) housework, but I have every hope of creating a lover of cleanliness and pleasantness in them eventually. At least we have an electric dishwasher now – they should be grateful for that!

How ironic that we can come to enjoy something we never dreamed we would even want to do! It’s kind of funny actually and a good life lesson.

© 2012  Amy Kallberg Bambilla. All Rights Reserved.