dragonlady7 | floor steamer

I own a floor steamer, and it's amazing, and I never use it.
I loaned it to Farmsister. Like, two years ago. Loaned her all the cloths that go with it.
Got the steamer back. Didn't get the cloths back.
Have used it one (1) time since, using an old dishtowel. Which I now can't find.
It's cool, I have a collection of shitty old dishtowels, so.
Anyhow, I have officially swept my kitchen floor, and then immediately swept it a second time, because there was so much filth that the broom couldn't possibly get it all in one pass. And then I steam-mopped it, so. It's filthy, stained, torn linoleum from 1950, it only gets so clean, but it's there now.

Farm-fam is in the car as of 10am, so I'll see them around 3ish. Which is both a week and three hours earlier than they were anticipating being here, so. That's fine.
Dude has been given a list of things to work on today, but apparently will be doing none of them, so it's good I didn't rely on him. (He said he wasn't working today, but he's been frowning at his computer all morning, including to the point where I had to ask him for permission to clean the kitchen since he was sitting in there an hour after I told him I was about to clean the floor. I actually think he is working after all, rather than being an ass, but it's truly incredible-- we have such wide-ranging and comprehensive conversations all the time for fun, but when I actually attempt to, say, ask him for help in specific terms, he literally never understands anything I say and almost every time does exactly what I asked him not to. So it makes me wonder about our philosophical conversations?)

I still have to make the guest-bed, but Chita is in it, and I don't want to disturb her since she'll have no peace once Farmkid gets here. (Farmkid loves cats. Chita does not love children. or strangers at all, really, though when we just have adult friends over she sometimes tries to sleep on their faces, since she considers the guest bed hers. It's extra-funny because she's invisible during the day when there are visitors, so many of these guests have not yet met her when she climbs onto their faces at 4am.)
(Not that we have guests over very often, but.)

One thing I rediscovered in the kitchen is that between the fridge and the sideboard I had a square of old chalkboard slid in there, and it would be fantastic for practicing chalk art lettering on. So I've got that cleaned off and set aside, and I'm going to find a spot for it, and honestly it might be smart to leave it out today for Farmkid to play with later.

I still have hours of tidying left to do, but as I said to my sister, the stuff I was actively ashamed of is at least taken care of. Well, some of it.
I'm mostly just going to shift things to the basement. Oh well. C'est la vie. There's too much stuff to really organize anyway, it needs massive what's-the-word, where you sort through and cull and rearrange and such. Maybe there's not a specific word for that and I'm imagining it.

Oh also I just looked at the stories I posted in 2018 and the first one, I posted on NYE 2017 and it didn't register as such, and I just noticed I never posted the second half of it, which was almost written by then too and then I let it fall by the wayside. So, whoops, maybe I'll have a minute and post that before the end of 2018. Christ, I was awful at publishing this year. But the thing is, I wrote a shitload of stuff. Just-- nothing finished. It's weird and uncomfortable and annoying and I'm pretending it's progress when it really does seem to be the opposite. Oh well!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

unicornduke

It sounds like you've gotten a shit ton done so good job!

From:

dragonlady7

What it really drives home to me is that if I just do stuff, I can get a lot done and it's not insurmountable.

The other thing it drives home is that if Dude just keeps up on the dishes, then I can get a lot done in the same amount of time that he spends on the dishes, and so I should make a point that whenever he's doing dishes, I should work on cleaning something else.

Also, drives home yet again for me that I really think Priority #1 in Fixing Up This House is that we get a new kitchen that has room for a dishwasher. Dude keeps saying like 'no first we need new windows' 'then we need a new furnace' and finally BIL asked him "what's your monthly heat bill" and Dude admitted "$100" and BIL was like "you are insane to prioritize your furnace, as long as it's working, because it's not like you are wasting money on a heat bill like that, yes you could heat a house this size for basically free but for real that's like $600 a year and a new furnace is at least $10k" and I guess somehow Dude didn't know that furnaces are that much??? I knew that!! he did not know that.

Anyway. Dishes are for some reason a full-time job in this house, and I would like us to have more time, and so fixing the kitchen is like. #1.
But also. I need to spend less time pacing nervously around being overwhelmed at how Filthy This House Is and more time just putting things away.

From:

unicornduke

Dishes are a pain in the ass and I hate them.

But they really don't take long to do, it's just doing them for me is urgurghrughugh.

For me, trying to do a little bit at a time does help with things that are mostly clean, like the kitchen. It takes me a minute to give the stove a quick wipedown. Same with the counters.

But like, with my room, it requires a full day of cleaning because it's just built up so much. There was one point, where I thought it was a terrible terrible idea because there was shit everywhere and it was a giant mess. But it's mostly under control now. idek cleaning is hard

From:

dragonlady7

Dishes shouldn't take long to do.
You turn on the water, let it get hot, right? Arrange the dishes into neat piles, like with like, cleanest first, dirtiest last (and rinse the really dirty stuff, but ostensibly you did that when you put the dishes in the sink in the first place because you're not an animal?). Take the largest dirty vessel, rinse it out, fill it with hot soapy water, or if you have a lot of dishes, put the plug in half the sink, fill that with hot soapy water, put in things to soak. Turn the water off. Stick all your silverware together in one mug or whatever to soak. Get it all arranged, then scrub a bunch of things, put them in the dry half of the sink. Reload the wet half of the sink, then rinse everything in the dry half, and put it in the dishrack. Turn the water back off. Repeat, until everything's done. Then wipe down the counters, wipe out the sink, empty the strainer baskets, squeeze out the sponge, put it away, go have a drink.
This is not how Dude does it.

He turns the water on full blast, angles it to go straight down the drain, and leaves it on until the hot water for the entire house runs out.
Meanwhile, he puts a load of soap on the sponge. Then he picks up a dish, wets it, contemplates it. Scrubs it. Never having been damp before, it takes some time to get the food off the dish. He works and works. Then he sticks the dish briefly under the thundering stream of full-bore hot water going straight down the drain, and contemplates the dish drainer for a while, then puts it away.
This goes on for hours.
It ends with the sponge left in the dirty sink, full of water, and the strainer baskets so full they don't drain anymore, and has never one time included wiping down any kind of counter surface.
We actually have a pair of beautiful handmade wooden cutting boards that live on our counters, but he uses them as cutting boards as well as countertops, and literally never rinses them or wipes them down, so that's also extremely horrifying. I occasionally soak the crusted garlic paste off one of them-- he loves to microplane garlic and then just put it straight onto the wooden cutting board, which means it's part of it forever, so there's that.

My mother has actually banned him from doing dishes in her house. She wasn't mean about it, she just said, "No, no, let someone else do them," and Dude has never asked again. (Actually, I had offered for him, because he never helps at family events unless asked, so I've gotten in the habit of asking for him.) And to me, quietly, she was like, "He uses so much hot water, it's incredible. I don't have that kind of water heater."

I'm not going to just do them, though, because I already did that with the laundry. The dishes are literally the only thing he can be relied upon to take the initiative and do without me having to ask him or explain how it should be done. (And I have asked if he could use less hot water and he seemed to think I was nuts, so I let it go. It's not like he doesn't know how other people do dishes. He's thirty-nine on Monday and has, to my knowledge, lived in this world the entire time.)

The other salient feature of his approach to dishes is that he won't do them after eating. He waits until he's hungry, and then and only then goes and begins the lengthy process of exterminating our hot water heater, and then now that he's actually dying of hunger, he begins to think "what shall I make?" and like, gets meat out of the freezer etc.

All of this drives me literally insane, but he told me he doesn't like the way I do dishes because he doesn't think I get them clean enough. !!!!!

From:

unicornduke

Jesus. The whole thing. Wow.

It must be really frustrating!

From:

dragonlady7

From:

paean

Mr. Paean and I got a dishwasher as a gift from my mother in 2002, and it literally saved our relationship. It was a portable one that had to hook up to the sink every time, but it took the arguing and resentment about dishes down to a manageable level where we could coexist again.

Having used several dishwashers in various moves since then, you really want to do some research before buying one. Getting one that has top ratings on cleaning baked on food and doesn’t require any precleaning is absolutely key. My current house (that we own! Or at least partially with a bank mortgage and all that) came with a mediocre dishwasher. Which means precleaning.

We are planning on a remodel where we actually move the kitchen, and the plan is for 2 dishwashers in the new kitchen, and they are my top priority for where we spend money. The current one will be relegated to the planned new wet bar in the basement, because even if it’s just a bunch of glasses and snack plates, I’m not hand washing anything.

From:

dragonlady7

I bought us one of those little portable countertop RV dishwashers in around 2005 or 6 or so, and we used it for a while, and it broke and we got a warranty replacement, but after a couple more years, Dude decided it didn't do a very good job, and with it installed we had nowhere to put a dish rack. So he carried it down to the basement where it's sat ever since.
It's one of the reasons I have been sort of insistent of him doing most of the dishes. because I thought the thing did a fine job, and also i have eczema that gets really bad between my fingers, and after one of the eczema blisters hosted a MRSA infection, I was like, "Bud, I'm on dish hiatus," and he eventually started doing them. I had a doctor tell me not to do the dishes, and she came out to the waiting room and told Dude that as well because I asked her to.

So I really think a proper dishwasher needs to go up the priority queue, but somehow Dude still resists, I dunno.

Two dishwashers, plus one in the basement, sounds like fucking heaven to me. I would perhaps die of bliss.

From:

paean

I think if we ever finally get to the remodel stage, rather than the planning stage, I will then never be able to bring myself to move. Because ... 3 dishwashers. Mr. P is excited about the counters and all that. I just want it to be clean as efficiently as possible.

Seriously though, with all the cooking mess and the kids, I've counted 7 loads of dishes over a weekend before. It gets ridiculous. I'd rather start having to go to the laudrymat again than wash dishes by hand.