I Hate Cleaning

This is just a general comment but I truly do hate it and I hate with equal furor the assumptions that people make when they hear I’m a stay-at-home mom. Today I have several chores to do around the house, most general like vacuuming, which I don’t mind, and others like cleaning Piss-boy and Fredo’s bathroom, which I do. The one task I truly despise however is cleaning out the fridge. I really don’t understand why it is that I end up with a fridge filled with near-empty jars and bottles of this and that. Mind you, the jars themselves have that full appearance but only when you open it, you realize that it’s really empty. There is a massive pickle jar, way in the back, that only had one pickle in it—which idiot does this? Who leaves a half-gallon size pickle jar in the back of the fridge with only one pickle in it or the twenty or so jars of various types of mustard? Or the jar of jelly that I can’t even tell how much is inside because the lid is now welded to the jar from the sugars hardening.

So, it doesn’t, thankfully take long to clean out, but I really hate the idea that I have to clean it out for that reason at all because when I use something, I don’t put an empty jar back into the fridge, I throw it away like most humans. I guess I don’t live with average humans though, more than likely, some form or modern Neanderthal. While you sit there and make your snappy judgments that I’m just on rant about Rainbird and company, I’ll thoroughly admit that the freezer is my fault. I tend to buy things, throw them into the freezer and add more stuff, toss that into the freezer until I can’t see what’s in there. Which leads to more buying of stuff, so I can accept full responsibility for that since I’m the only one in the house that even understands that we have a freezer to begin with, except it’s also where mom keeps the Toaster Sticks ®

“Your House Must Always Be Clean”

That is one the many comments myself as stay-at-home mom hears on a regular basis, and for the record, my fucking house isn’t always clean, it might (depending on the time/day of the week) be presentable but it’s rarely clean. My working mom friends start in talking about how hard it is to juggle a job and motherhood, which I know is difficult because I’ve done that too, but that also doesn’t mean that its any easier. I’m folding clothes most times at 11PM because it’s the only time I don’t have a child climbing up my ass for some reason or another. They tend to look surprised when I say that and equally surprised when I tell them my house is never clean, because the kids are in it, see that’s what they don’t tell you when you sign up to be a stay-at-home mom and have those warm fuzzy thoughts of June Cleaver. Remember Wally and Beave were in school all day and it was also at a time when children did things like, go into town to “mess around.” To look at the construction sight on Main Street, USA, usually leaving the house after breakfast and coming home right before dinner and no one batted an eye.

Here’s the other thing they don’t tell you when you sign up to be a stay-at-home mom and get your welcome kit, your husband disappears. After all, he works, and deserves time to himself to hang at the pub with the guys or watch a football game uninterrupted, and it doesn’t matter that you’ve been dealing with those people under 4feet tall all week. You don’t get a vacation, at least not a real one, because the vacation means cramming the kids into a car or plane, heading somewhere where you’ll likely end up doing the exact same things you do at home but just hundreds of miles away. Housework is fully up to you because; well your husband works for a living, so you can’t expect him to share the chores and even more gets lumped onto you—like the little things you didn’t have to do before like taking out the trash and cleaning the garage. Loss of additional income might also mean not saving as much for retirement, using credit more often, putting off several years having a new car, or a newer one. It’s not a cheap way to go.

Getting back for a moment to the not getting paid thing, it’s not just that you’re not getting paid, the longer you stay home with the kids, the more difficult it can be to reenter the workforce. Not to mention the not paying into SS, SSDI for all that time as well, you’re really fucking yourself with a football but you just don’t realize it. Until you try to go back to work and find out the only place willing to take a chance on you is the card shop. Employers see you as a risk, after all, you stopped working before and even though no one ever stays at one job for the rest of their lives anymore, employers like to believe that you will—unless they decide to lay you off.

© 2006