Breaking The Mould

Hating housework

I have an admission to make. Or should I say confession? It's not really something I feel ashamed of. I'm just a little unsure of how this little insight into my life, will play out.

Well, here goes.

For the past few years our bathroom has been host to a little chap we have christened Morris. He is about ten centimetres squared, grey in colour with a slightly bumpy texture. He requires no feeding and seems to survive quite easily on the soggy plasterboard he's attached to. Morris is a mould patch. He's virtually one of the family, although admittedly, not a very portable member.

I allow him to live in our house, not because I'm a big-hearted charitable ditz - but because I am a lazy slob who simply cannot be bothered to address the ‘eradication of Morris' issue. Call it denial. Call it disgusting. Call it Penicillium chrysogenum.

The Morris situation illustrates quite starkly my attitude to housework. I blame it all on a traumatic incident from my childhood.

It all started at my dear grandmother's house. She was a fastidious homemaker, well known locally for her gleaming polished floors and pin-neat garden. Whenever we visited, she would sit my sisters and me around the dining-room table and cover the heavy, purple tablecloth with silverware. She would hand us two cloths each, one for application of polish, the other for removal. We got to buffing until that silver sparkled like diamonds.

So far, so straightforward.

But one day, as is often the case, a casual, throwaway comment by Granny, made a lasting impact on me.

It was a blistering hot summer's day and we had been holed-up in the dining room all morning. We wanted to go outside and torture the twin boys who lived next-door.

‘Why is Friday always silver polishing day, Granny?' whined my big sister, with undisguised irritation.

‘Because Monday is wash day, Tuesday is floors, Wednesday is bathrooms, Thursday is dusting, Friday is silver, Saturday is bed linen and Sunday is steps and windows,' was her matter-of-fact reply.

I asked her to repeat herself because I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly. Perhaps she was just singing a little nursery rhyme for our entertainment, as she often did.

But no. She repeated her solemn mantra, word perfect.

My heart squeezed, with, what? Shame? That I knew already at such a tender age, my dedication to housework could never rival hers? Or was it confusion? That perhaps Granny was losing her marbles? Who in their right mind would timetable their life around housework? Surely it was the product of a sick mind?

As a result of being brought up in such an ordered, squeaky clean regime, my own mother detests housework. Paradoxically, although she has a passionate distaste for cleaning, she still feels compelled to keep her environment spotless. The difference between my mother and my granny, is that my mother complains very loudly about having to do it, at any given opportunity, to any poor sap who will listen. Whereas Granny scrubbed and cleaned in saintly silence.

So, where do I fit in with all this weird compulsive behaviour? Well, I take after my mother in that I complain very loudly about having to do housework. But I don't actually do any. So, it's a win-win situation for me. I get the therapeutic benefit of moaning without all the dirty, messy, cleaning mullarkey. Perfect!

So, Morris is safe for the time being. Finances dictate that the bathroom refit is on the back-burner, so there is no imminent danger of sledgehammering Morris into the splashback. In fact, I have some rather exciting news...we have a new addition to the household...another family member has turned up in the kitchen sink overflow. She has a working title of Fungie fungus. We're waiting to see if she sticks around. We don't want to go to all the trouble of christening her officially, if she's just a temporary biohazard. We could do without the heartbreak.