Thursday, July 12, 2012

Trading Spouses

I am currently watching an episode of Trading Spouses. Lifetime channel has recently begun airing re-runs of both Trading Spouses and Wife Swap, which essentially are reality shows where two families swap wives for a week. They are usually completely opposite families with conflicting values and ideals so each wife is always in for a shock.

This episode features a well-to-do WASP family from Connecticut that I am in love with. They are basically my dream family. The father is a surgeon and the wife is a highly-intelligent woman with a law degree that chose to give up her career to stay home to raise her five sons. They live in a beautiful, traditional home that is beautiful, neat and clean. In contrast, the other Mom is a housewife as well (she doesn't have a job), but lives as a complete slob. Her house is dirty and full of clutter, nowhere near the level of a hoarder but still cluttered and messy.  This woman is nowhere near as bad as my mom was (my mom was a hoarder and compulsive shopper), but she reminds me so much of how my mom raised me.

On the first day of the wife swap, the dad and sons of the WASP family are awake and down in the kitchen at 8 am cooking a healthy breakfast. They wonder where the swapped wife is. She doesn't wake up til 11 am and a shot of her bed is shown where she doesn't even make it. Then, she doesn't even go to breakfast and just spends the whole day in the pool swimming without doing any work whatsoever, either expecting everyone else to clean up after her or just not caring about the mess.

I love how the normal family does dishes right after breakfast. That is so unbelievably cool. I first learned about this routine when I was about 12 or 13 at a friends house. I had no idea that that is what most normal people do. They have a family dinner (one that is actually cooked and well-prepared) and not some hamburger helper thrown together and some instant mashed potatoes. After dinner, the kids all help out and wash the dishes. It makes perfect sense. If you rinse of the dishes right away, getting rid of the excess food in the trash and rinsing them off and washing them then it is SO MUCH easier than just throwing them in the sink and then leaving them there, then a few days later, you have to get out your heavy duty scrubber and scrub the dishes really hard to get off the hard, crusted food.

I just love these programs because I get to watch normal families, how they clean up after themselves, making their beds and washing the dishes after dinner on a daily basis because then they have the luxury of living in a beautiful, clean environment. When I was little, once in a blue moon, like maybe once a year, my mom and I would tackle cleaning the house. It was such a depressing, impossible scary task because we hadn't cleaned in so long that there would be caked on mildew and dirt. We would have to use heavy-duty cleaning products like C-L-R-(calcium-lime-rust remover) and let it soak on the sink for hours to get rid of the layers of slime. It just seems so much easier and more efficient to just pick up after yourself every day and then clean on a regular basis.

Every time I would try to clean as a child I would be scolded and yelled at by my mother. She would yell "Why are you doing this to me NOW?" as if I just happened to pick the worst possible time to clean and there were plenty of other times I could have chosen.....except every time I ask to clean is always the worst time. She is never in a frame of mind where she is ready to clean. My mom didn't even have a job. I remember when I would do something like go grab the broom out of the laundry room or pick up a role of paper towel and my mom would give me an evil glare and ask "What do you think you're doing?" She would always yell at me that I didn't know how to clean.

My mom was a germophobe as well so she didn't only hate cleaning because it might involve discarding some of her precious junk or moving it around but also it would spread germs. She didn't let me use a sponge to wipe out the sink because she said it spread bacteria around. Similarly, I couldn't use a cloth or a rag to wipe up the counter, I HAD to use paper towel.

It was only within the last few months that I have finally given up. I am 25 and still living with my parents because I lost my job. I used to attempt to still clean up my childhood home and make it decent-or at least keep the kitchen clean because I wanted a clean place to learn how to cook in. I realized that it is a foolish thing to do. Even if I do get the kitchen cleaned it will still look terrible and trashy because there is so much clutter around. My mom has a stack of papers two-feet high on the counter so there is no counter space to cook or to set anything down. The only place to set anything down is on the stove. I always have to strategically move things around on the stove to make room for things while I'm cooking. She also has numerous precious knick-knacks sitting all over the counter wall-to-wall so there is no room.

I finally gave up cleaning completely when I got tired of her yelling at me about the sponge. I would use the same sponge for wiping out the dirty sink as well as cleaning the dishes. I didn't see a problem with this as both the sink and the dishes are always dirty so it's not like I'm contaminating one or the other. However, my mom screams at me that my dad washes his hands in the sink and therefore the sink is contaminated with germs so I can't use the same sponge that I wipe up the sink with to wash the dishes. The dishes are just as filthy, they sit there for days and sometimes weeks so I often find them to be filled with green mold that has an overwhelming awful stench. My dad would sometimes catch her yelling at me about this sponge business and take my side and tell her he's nuts and I am welcome to use whatever sponge I want to wash the dishes. But she still screams and yells and tells us we're both nuts.

I recall my dad saying "That's why I don't do any housework. I stopped doing any housework whatsoever in this house twenty years ago." I think my dad has the right idea. I am sick and tired of fighting with her and having to abide by her stupid rules and it's such a daunting task trying to clean with so much clutter so I'm just going to give up. Let the house continue to be a dump. At least I'm still young and will be moving out of her to have my own life :)

I just need to give up on the stupid childish dream of having my childhood home be clutter-free and clean. It's never going to happen. It's a fantasy. I will just move on and look forward to having my own house someday with my own family where I will be a model housewife and live the way I have always dreamed. I can't imagine how fun that would be to have a big beautiful kitchen that is neat and clean. Having a good time cooking meals (I don't know how to cook but I'm going to learn) and having counter-tops that are cleared off and not filled with junk. Not having to constantly shuffle around junk and clutter just to make room to chop vegetables. I can't wait.

1 comment:

  1. It will happen for you one day. I'm sorry you have to deal with this.

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