Housekeeping and Knitting

I have a complicated relationship with housekeeping. Well, I guess it can only be a relationship if both parties participate, and since one of the parties, namely moi, does not participate, I guess it's not a relationship but a bad situation.

I have friends who clean their houses. Really well. Like, baseboards and grout lines and refrigerator drawers get cleaned. Regularly. And then there's my version of cleaning: if my feet, or the feet of the dog, stick to the floor, I clean it. Maybe. If the kids feet stick to it, oh well. It's probably their feet that are sticky and not the floor. So I make them go outside and clean their feet off in the grass. If the refrigerator smells so bad when I open it that I fear something has died in it, I consider cleaning it but most likely will simply open the door, toss in some baking soda, and shut the door quickly. Toilets do get cleaned weekly, but that's only because the baby has a bad habit of slurping potty water off her fingers at inopportune moments and I want her to maybe not die of dysentery.

My house is not disgusting, but it's not clean either. My kids help me clean most days, so you can only imagine how well that goes. This morning, I wanted my older girls to vacuum the front room rugs and sweep under the couches. The sweeping went fine, but when GG1 got out the vacuum, things began to go south. Well, north, I guess, since they used the vacuum nozzle to suck their hair up into giant 80's bouffants. Apparently GH taught them this cute trick. I heard the vacuum running and assumed that meant the floors were getting cleaner. I went in to check on them when I heard girlish peals of laughter and was not terribly surprised when two tiny Cyndi Laupers met me at the door, hair frothing around their heads, while the vacuum lay overturned on the rug, aimlessly sucking up nothing.

Tonight I wanted to clean the shower, which hasn't been cleaned since the Reagan administration. I got the girls occupied in the living room, gave MOS my phone to play Angry Chicken, and put GG3 in her bedroom with toys. I was interrupted by the children approximately twenty-seven times while trying to scrub the shower and then GG3 came in the bathroom and wet on the floor because I had either forgotten to put a diaper on her or she took it off. Super. Needless to say, I have reasons for not cleaning very often. It's very difficult, I'm not good at it, and it's just plain old not fun.

However, I do knit. What does this have to do with housekeeping, you might ask? I consider housekeeping to be a rather fruitless undertaking. If I dust today, I move my arm back and forth on horizontal surfaces, ridding them of dust. If I dust every week, say, it's the same movement, same energy, same effort, same result. And if I only dust once every month, or every other month, same movement, same energy, etc. So, I dust once a month. Sometimes more, most times less. Why waste all that energy on dusting when I could be knitting? Knitting is also the same movement, over and over. Right needle through the stitch on the left hand needle, yarn wrapped around right hand needle, pull the stitch through, old one jumps off, WOW a new stitch! Wheee! Progress! So even though knitting is made up of hundreds, nay, thousands of stitches all made the same way, it is progressive and I have something to show for it. If I dust every day or every week, I don't have anything to show for it, except maybe a wicked case of tennis elbow and perhaps an allergy flare up. I mean, the dust will be back. Maybe not tomorrow, but definitely in a few days. And you won't even be able to tell that I dusted in the first place. But knitting....after I get done making that knit stitch a million times, I'll have a sock! Or a sweater! Or a hat! Or possibly a knitted thong! (you're welcome for that little visual)

Those of you who enjoy housekeeping, please, do keep it up. If nothing else, I can come over and not feel so grimy when I hang out with you. You can keep your scrub brushes and cleaning solutions and mops and brooms and whatever else you use to make your house sparkling clean. I'll take my knitting needles, some really luscious yarn I just got, you won't believe how soft it is, and I'm going to sit myself down in the midst of clutter that is my house and knit a spell. The children will probably vault off the couch and spill applesauce on the floor, which the dog will lick up just fine, thankyouverymuch. I hope the baby has on a diaper because I don't feel like mopping right now. I've got a sock to knit.