I thought it might be fun for our members to post their Housework-Horror stories and to get to know each other a little bit.
Does your housework-hating ever get you in a pickle? Do you have a funny story about housecleaning? Or maybe a downright scary story about your lack of it? We would love to hear it! Please post your story or remark in the comments section together with your name and Twitter username and let’s get to know one another.
P.S. The first member to submit their story will appear as our "Featured Member for July."
Does your housework-hating ever get you in a pickle? Do you have a funny story about housecleaning? Or maybe a downright scary story about your lack of it? We would love to hear it! Please post your story or remark in the comments section together with your name and Twitter username and let’s get to know one another.
P.S. The first member to submit their story will appear as our "Featured Member for July."
Our daughter, Kristin had a "party" at our house her senior year of high school. While the cats were away the mice did play! How did I know, you ask? Trying to make the house look like it did before we left she decided to clean the "tile" floor in the kitchen & hallway area. Seems she thought using "linoleum clean & shine" was a great idea. I walked in and saw the mess the minute I got home. So, imagine me the day I got home from a wonderful trip on my hands and knees trying to remove "linoleum clean & shine" from "tile". I was not a happy momma!
ReplyDeleteBlairsden
@Blairsden: Thanks for the laugh!! I cannot even imagine what a job that was. So glad you shared with us. Also, Congratulations! You will be our Featured Member of July. Please submit what personal information you wish to share with our members to HouseworkHatersClub@gmail.com.
ReplyDeleteAs I was growing up, my mother worked full-time, sometimes pulling double shifts at the hospital where she worked. With two younger sisters, my main responsibility was to keep an eye on them. Mom was an excellent cook and homemaker but she didn’t like the children being under foot when she was busy with cooking or housework. This is one of the primary reasons I did not learn to cook.
ReplyDeleteOnce dinner was finished, it was my responsibility to clear the table and wash the dishes—by hand. I hated this chore with a passion! I vividly remember standing at the kitchen sink looking at the window into the darkness seeing my tears roll down my face in the reflection. It also didn’t help that I was short so just reaching the sink was a chore in itself and I would often use a step stool.
My distaste for washing dishes stayed with me even after I married my first husband at the age of 19. Shortly after our wedding, we moved into an upstairs apartment of a refurbished building that had been used during the Civil War as an Officer’s Barracks. It was a cool apartment with beautiful architectural detail. But the owners had skimped a little when it came to the remodeling of the kitchen, which was a fairly large odd-shaped room. The kitchen sink was an outdated white contraption that had a small shallow one-bowl sink. I found it very difficult to wash and rinse dishes in the space allotted and, being that I didn’t like it that much anyway, I tended to let dishes pile up.
One day my cousin came to visit. She was appalled that I had so many dirty dishes piled in and around the sink. So she offered her help. It was probably one of the funniest days of my life. After her attempts to work in the gosh-awful sink, she joked that it would probably be easier to wash them in the bathtub. Well…..to the bathroom we went.
The bathtub was an antique claw-foot tub without a shower. Laughing the whole time, we filled the tub full of dish detergent and hot water and proceeded to wash every dish. We laid towels out all over the bathroom floor to put the dishes on to dry. As we stood in the bathroom proudly admiring all the clean dishes and still laughing ourselves silly, my husband unexpectedly came home—with a friend. You cannot even imagine how embarrassed I was when of course the friend needed to use the restroom.
Thank goodness today I have a dishwasher and, although I still don’t like to hand-wash dishes, I rarely let them pile up. However, I am more inclined to overload the dishwasher now. My cousin still to this day brings up the story about the day we washed dishes in the bathtub.
@Decotta
Laughing at your dirty dishes story! Don't know why we even had a dishwasher while growing up... My Dad made my sister & I wash them before even putting them in the dishwasher :) LOL
ReplyDeleteWhen my husband I first married, one nice spring day he was outside washing the race car, while I am in the house doing laundry, and all the other housework. A bunch of his buddies showed up and pitched in to help him wash the race car, the car hauler, his regular car then proceeded to begin washing their cars. As I walked by the open window and saw what was going on, I called down and ask that while they were at, if they would wash may car. Well, my husband choose that moment to be Mr. Bigshot Newlywed in front of his buddies, and replied to me that "I did not get your car dirty". And they did NOT wash my car.
ReplyDeleteWell, I continued the laundry and housework. Come Monday morning my husband is getting ready for work and came into the living room asking me if I did laundry over the weekend, to which I replied that I had. He then told me he had no clean jeans or underwear, you guessed it, to him I replied "I did not get those dirty!"
We have now been married for 28 years in August, and to this day I can mention that my car is dirty and he will either wash it or give me the money to take it to the car wash.
I can't help but laugh at all the stories. As a professional organizer I think back about why I chose to do it. I remember that as a kid in a house where I was the oldest of seven and a MOM who couldn't bring herself to throw away anything I lived in chaos and to say the least ton's of housework. My kids grew up with my constantly cleaning and nic-named me the clean freak MOM. I made their lives miserable and mine. I hated housework but thought I was a bad person if I didn't keep it up. I thought I was a bad mom if I said I hated housework. I finally learned that it's not only OK to hate it, It's also OK not to do it sometimes LOL. I developed a system of organization to help keep things looking like they were done whether they were or not. My Mother's house still looks like a flea market and she is happy with it. Mine not as much but certainly no clean freak anymore and it's far more comfortable. Thus it is not only OK to be a housework hater, It makes for a happier life to do so LOL
ReplyDeleteFor those that don't know, my feet are hurting bad again. I guess the short few weeks respite is over. I guess I overdid it this weekend.
ReplyDeleteSo today I am stomping around, pissed off at the world.
And so I decided, okay, well FINE....so my feet are hurting?? Tough! My kitchen floor needs to be swept and wet-jetted. So in strong defiance of the pain, I decided I would thumb my nose at it, and I swept and swept, grumbling & mumbling...then I reached for the wet-jet and when I pressed the button...nothing happens. I pressed it again and again, nothing. So I thought WTF? I thought, NO WAY BABY....and I found and called the phone number on the bottle of solution and the little automated spiel mentioned that the batteries might be dead. Okay, so where the hell is the battery compartment on this stupid piece of crap. I had to go online and find the demo where it shows where the stupid batteries go. So I go back to my wet-jet and ....I can't get the stupid thing open! I pry with my arthritic, stiff fingers, squeezing and prying and digging and I look at the thing and it doesn't even look like it is supposed to open at all! But I can see the stinkin' battery wires in there!! ROFLMAO! OMG, so now I'm about to throw the fricking thing out the window. I mean I am STEAMIN'! I say OKAY FINE!! I AM STUPID! I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW A STUPID PLASTIC MOP WORKS!!!! ROFL!
So.....I slowly, gently pick it up and put the nice, handy-dandy little wet-jet mop back in the utility closet ...close the sliding door, put the rugs back on my kitchen floor and walk out of the kitchen....trying to imagine what my blood pressure reading is at this particular moment, and thinking, wouldn't it be a shame if Julie had a stroke because she couldn't get the battery compartment of the wet-jet open????? OMG!
Part Two.
Ummmmm.......well....the other day, my husband informed me, after looking at the wet-jet in quesiton, that the battery pack thing on the back was evidently knocked off somehow (and laying on the floor of the utility closet) and that is why I couldn't put in new batteries. Duh.
Well, but.....in my own defense, I didn't put the damn thing together when we got it, my husband did. So I never actually saw the battery pack when it was on the actual wet-jet. I don't pay attention to things like that. I look for and find the BUTTON. If I push the BUTTON and it works, that is all I care about. :o)
I pushed the button that fateful day....and nothing happened. Thus...my wet-jet trauma.
Okay, now I feel even stupider. But I'm on alot of medication. :o)
My son wanted to iron a shirt the other day. I was so proud of him! He asked me where the iron and ironing board were. My face went blank. I think I'd seen them 9 years before, when we'd remodeled the pantry. A quick check (2 hours later) found them stacked underneath piles of boxes and junk in the garage. I proudly dusted them off, set them up, and told my sweet son to have at it. He plugged in the iron, heated it up, placed his freshly washed shirt on the board, put the iron on the shirt, then quickly pulled it up. "What in the heck is THIS?" he said, looking down at his now brown patchy shirt.
ReplyDelete"Oh no!" I said. Then I remembered: the last time I'd used the iron, it was for making grilled cheese sandwiches, and hadn't cleaned the iron - the old cheese had 'melted' onto his shirt. Did he get the shirt clean? Uhm - I can't remember...
Today I dropped a clear rubber earring back - the tiny kind - on the floor in our utility room on the way out the back door. I froze, knowing chances were very slim I could find it in all that mess. There was a heavy thicket of cobwebs from kicktile to floor...I peered closer and SAW MY EARRING BACK! It had fallen right through the web and was now guarded by it! I got a stick from outside, wiped away the web and reclaimed my earring back! LOL
ReplyDeletex0x
Anita @ModelSupplies
My favorite story took place at Christmas while I was in college. My dad loves peanut brittle, so I decided to make him some in their newly remodeled kitchen while my folks were out and about. All went well until I poured the molten peanut brittle to cool on the jazzy new inset glass cutting board in the kitchen island. I thought it was an incredibly clever idea until I couldn't get the d***ed stuff off the jazzy new cutting board - it just would not budge. I was just terrified to face my mother because that new kitchen was her pride and joy and I knew she wouldn't cotton to part of it being destroyed.
ReplyDeleteI covered the mess up and screwed up my courage and fessed up to her when she got home. She winked at me, told me to wait until my dad went to bed, and that we would get the peanut brittle off the cutting board. Once dad fell asleep, she went out to the garage and got his linoleum heating tool out (heats and softens linoleum up so that it can be scraped up). While she heated the peanut brittle up, I scraped it up in pieces and let it cool on cookie sheets. It was all very clean and easy once we got started, and I was able to give my dad the candy for Christmas without him being the wiser.
My mother and I laughed about that for years, and to tell you the truth, I've never made candy since!
I was in a new city, in my first apartment and I tended to let dishes pile up.
ReplyDeleteMy mom and aunt came to visit and I was rushing to clean house and do the dishes. I ened up putting some of the dishes in the oven to do after they leave.
After a full day, the dishes piled up, I thought I wait until morning to do them.
Well my aunt was making a big fuss over the dishes and started to wash them.
I was at first irked that she was in some way making a comment on my cleaning skills.
I refused to let it end that way. I pulled open the oven door and said well if you are going to do those then have at these too.
She was shocked at frist then my mom and aunt had a big laugh and will not let me forget it to this day..
I will say though that they never have offered to do any more of my work for me again..
-Bob
My story starts in a similar manner to the one before me...but it ends less happily.
ReplyDeleteBefore I got married, my friend (now my sister-in-law) and I shared an apartment. It wasn't in a bad area, but we did have some less-than-desirables for neighbors.
Although our apt. was always "clean" as in no dust, dirt or grime... it was often in disarray - especially in the kitchen. We loved to cook and hated to do dishes.
One day we came home to find that our apartment had been broken into and all of our electronics were missing. They had also broken into another nearby apartment, so the police were already on the scene. We wanted to have them come in, but we knew that our kitchen was terribly messy - and given that the kitchen window was how the thieves gained entrance, we wouldn't be able to exclude it from the tour.
Thinking quickly, we stacked the Tupperwear bowls and spatulas into a nice stack and shoved them into the oven. Worked great! Until...
A couple days later, some friends came over to visit unexpectedly. They were a wonderful couple old enough to be our grandparents, but we were very fond of them. In an effort to impress, I whipped together a from-scratch banana cake in a metal bowl (couldn't find my Tupperware bowl for anything) and preheated the oven.
Within minutes, we had black smoke billowing out from the oven, smoke alarms going off, fire trucks showing up...but we found our Tupperware bowls.
To this day I think about that if I ever put ANYTHING in the oven to store it. I ask myself... will this melt?