Chores from the River Styx

Many churches celebrate communion every week. This is a time to join not only with the Lord, but with other believers, to share burdens and joys, to worship and be thankful.

In our home, we also have a weekly ceremony of coming together, sharing burdens, and opening our hearts to one another by reaching into a communal crock. But instead of sharing bread and wine, we Draw Chores. Drawing Chores creates the opposite effect, however, as we piece out the week's obligations like Europe parceling out Africa.

we rarely wear suits to draw chores

*Some background information: my household consists of myself (Mama, mid-twenties), the Weatherman (my husband of a certain number of years, mid-thirties), our two children (Eeffers, age 3, boy; and Snoozy, age 1, girl), and my good friend the kids call Gogo, who rents part of our house (and, bless her heart, shares our kitchen and dining space).

Because the Weatherman and myself are, by nature, selfish, lazy, ill-tempered brutes, we decided two years ago that the safest and most equitable to divide chores would be to leave it to Fate, to cast lots, as it were, by drawing slips of paper from a jar every Sunday night.

no Monday Dishes, no Monday Dishes 

Our household chores consist of the following--Dishes (Sun-Sat), Vacuuming (Tues and Thurs, up and downstairs), Tidy (Mon, Wed, Fri, Weekend), Sweep (Mon and Fri), and some varied things like Mop Kitchen, Fridge Sweep (we have good intentions about leftovers, but rarely follow through), Bathroom, Mow (currently: Shovel Snow), and the enigmatic Organize One Spot (which, for the Weatherman, means Free Pass).

Tonight is the first night we have drawn chores all year. Granted, 2017 has only just begun, but I still feel that it is inauspicious to not have started right after the start of the new annum.

Drawing chores always comes with a certain amount of suspicion, skepticism, and surveillance, much like current relations between the US and China. On the surface, everybody's following well-established household rules, but underneath there's always the risk of shady, underhanded dealings and collusion.

maybe we should draw chores at high noon

For example, since he doesn't yet know about this blog, while drawing chores for the Weatherman in his absence, I pulled out two slips instead of one--Monday Trash Out and Tuesday Vacuum. 

Now, like most members of my gender, possessing sensitive olfactory nerves, I am not keen on taking out the trash (and this particular chore includes not only rolling down to the curb on Monday, but removal of daily household trash). But my husband has no such compunctions, and I like to think he revels in the masculine duty of taking out the garbage, much like early homo sapiens bringing in a trussed-up deer. So, in his best interests, I let Tuesday Vacuum slip back into the ceramic pitcher, and awarded Monday Trash Out to my lucky spouse.

I'm sure there are other ways to divide chores equitably, or, in the wise words of my pastor "in marriage, there should be no counting of who-does-what or who-did-more; just do what needs to be done. Put yourself last." But then, he is a very godly man, and we are made of weaker stuff.*

*Also, he is married to a total fox 

**Insert joke about how pastors only work one day out of the week, anyhow.

Sisyphean Start

I called my mom yesterday, as women in crisis are wont to do.

"Mom," I said, "I can't keep my house clean." My eyes roamed over our living room, strewn with socks, train parts, board books, and scraps of a conservative news magazine (apparently my youngest was With Her).

"It doesn't matter how clean and organized I can get it," I continued, "the next day, it's trashed. I've tried every method I can think of. Why can't I do something so basic as keeping my family spaces tidy?"

And my mother, sage that she is, said "Well, you can have a clean house and a miserable family, or you can learn to be okay with it and have peace at home."

Wise words, mother! But I do believe I detect a whiff of settling in her advice, a sort of domestic fatalism about tidiness.

like Sisyphus, I am bound to hell

The human race is capable of so much--pyramids, C-sections, indoor plumbing, heart transplants, democracy (well, okay, let's wait that one out), even sterile operating rooms. How have we not progressed to a method of keeping house consistently and sanely?

Perhaps the state of our home is a reflection of our internal, psychological state. Isn't is interesting how, in housekeeping, the greatest obstacles to Man's success is not entropy, nature, or engineering, but Little Man? I don't struggle keeping house because I lack the technology or knowledge, but because I cannot seem to overcome the seemingly endless stream of plastic cars, Zingo chips, sippy cups, and unsorted mail that rails against the confines of their dedicated spots.


And, aside from the machinations of Little Man (and, in my case, Little Girl), there is the OTHER Little (Wo)man--my internal struggle to Be An Adult--do the hard thing. Eat the frog first. Put down that Garth Nix Young Adult series that you've been rereading since 9th grade (what?? you too?? oh! 💗) and WASH SOME DISHES.

When little heads hit their little pillows at 8:00 (or 8:30....or 9:00....), all I want to do is escape for an hour or three into my books, Netflix, or trying to get those damn Jamberry wraps to not fray at the tips. Whatever pioneer spirit my ancestors had that enabled them to churn butter, sew quilts, and slaughter chickens all before 7:00 am was exhausted in the mid-1950s, when my estimable mother got the final dose.

my ancestors looking down on me

Like other millennials, I coast along on technological privilege (thank you, all that is holy, for the dishwasher), a balanced marriage (props to my Weatherman), and a deeply seated conviction that somewhere, somehow, there exists a simple, material solution (to what is undoubtedly a problem of character) to keep my home clean.

There's KonMari (tried it), the Toothbrush Method (tried it), the Broken Window theory (yep), Minimalism (I keep getting rid of stuff. I'll probably be naked before my laundry is all hanging up.), and Feng Shui. All that's left is the Nero method, in which you burn everything to the ground, but insurance tends to frown on that.

these is also the Beyonce method

So this blog is an effort to frankly (and most probably painfully) document my efforts to make the change from chronically cluttered to frequently tidy.