Lessons From the Laundry

This is the song that never ends. It just goes on and on, my friends... Okay, now that I've got that earworm stuck in your head (you can thank me later!)... this is what housework seems like to me. Unlike many other things I do, housework is the job never done, the job that never even creates true progress. Kids grow up and mature, and the issues and trials you deal with as parents evolve and change. Even though, in the short term, it can feel like you're making no headway, over time the kids turn into adults and your job is largely done. Learning a new skill like cake decorating or playing the piano takes time and effort, but if you work at it, eventually the learning phase is mostly behind you and you have a mastered skill to show for it. But dishes, vacuuming, laundry, ironing, mopping? These are repetitive tasks you do over and over again until you're too old and frail to do them, and even then, they still need to be done by someone. And it's not even as if you make a bed once, and then that one sits there as a monument to your achievement while you go one making other beds. You make that bed only to have it unmade so you can make it again tomorrow. You wash the dishes only to have the very same plate grabbed off the dish rack and covered in food again. You do a load of laundry and before it's even lost its fresh-from-the-dryer warmth, someone has pulled out an outfit and gone and played in the mud.

Now, to be fair, housework does change slightly over time. The day will come when doing the dishes no longer involves trying to get the germ-infested gunk out of the narrow crevices of a sippy cup. And dealing with spit-up stains eventually gives way to dealing with grass stains. But that doesn't offer much hope when you've still got dishes and stains.

I think this is why I find household tasks to be one of the most draining parts of managing the household, often more so than parenting, if that's possible :) It's like rolling a heavy rock up a hill, only to have it come rolling back down so you can push it back up again. There's something about working hard at something, all the while knowing that it's all about to be undone, that can easily suck the joy right out of you.

So where is the hope in my housework? When I'm tempted to complain, lash out and/or despair about all the work that keeps getting undone, I have some thoughts that help put the joy back into cleaning. But to keep them in bite-sized chunks, I'll share them with you over the next 4 days!