Chores

and some reasons to love them

(I’m trying to trick myself.)

When I was five, my mom gave me a bright yellow pad of paper with thick black lettering—my first chore chart. Even though yellow was my most favorite color then, the chart completely repulsed me. Thinking back, it might be my earliest memory for the sensation of repulsion. Something about it set my child-self off: the design was poor, it was hard to customize, it listed chores that weren’t even applicable to our household, it assigned a monetary value to it all—of which I was certain to not be paid, and I don’t know, I guess I thought it was awfully audacious. How dare a piece of paper, or my mother for that matter, think that just because they write make bed or fold laundry in a bold font that I’d simply make my bed or fold my laundry. What was next? Would my Lisa Frank coloring book decide what I’d wear to school? It was an outrage, certainly, and a completely unnecessary one, given as I’d always thought myself to be fairly reasonable as it related to chore-requests. Why couldn’t my mother just ask me to do a chore? Why did we suddenly require legislation?

The flippancy of five-year-old-me both makes me giggle and want to bang my head on the wall. It was on brand, I’ll give us that, however, it would’ve been super great had I learned concepts like “schedule” and “routine” before the ripe age of now. My academics would’ve benefitted, certainly, and I’d have a lot more space on my phone without all these self-care chore checklist apps, each of which comes with a cute animal who only gets to eat if you clean your bathroom or organize your closet. I’ve got a bird for mental health, a capybara for physical, and of course, an owl for Spanish practice. My phone is a fucking zoo.

The list you’ll find here today is another self-indulgent one. I think, perhaps, everything I write is pretty self-indulgent. Here’s to change:

I. Doing the dishes

Washing the dishes is so much easier in Mexico. Just from a mechanical perspective, you’d think it would be simpler here, what with the nearly instantaneous hot water and the spray-hose-thingy which I use to blast dry smoothie chunks out the blender with delight. I like our sink, I just hardly touch it.

My aunt’s sink is not as fancy, but it consistently remains empty. My aunt, Sarai, amongst a million other things, is incredibly good at chores. Miss girl wakes up by seven a.m. at the latest every single day. Every day, she’d tuck her honey-colored hair into a loose ponytail and mop the marble-tiled floors, throw in a load of laundry or two, clean the bathroom, feed the dogs, dust, sing, all before I’d worked up the courage to crack open an eyelid. In fact, she frequently beat the sunshine in waking me up, almost as if it was just another chore, another blink, on her mental list of many. I’d hear her singsong voice call from the courtyard window, mi niña, presiosa, hermosa, linda, and even if I tucked my head under the blanket, I’d be up and brushing my teeth five minutes later. Her sweetness was unshakable, inseverable, part of her body just like any other stretch mark or scar and it showed in her commitment to creating cleanliness for her loved ones. Her determined eyes would only see us taken care of.

With the dishes in particular, it amazed me the first couple of days how they’d simply vanish. My younger cousin certainly wasn’t washing them, that little brat. (I slight her with so much endearment—her brattiness is going to serve her well as an adult.) It was my aunt, moving in silence between each breath. Whether it was un cafecito or un tecito, as soon as the last sip slipped down my gullet, her eyebrows would dance up, pulling her face wide like an owl’s, while she checked to see if I was done, and then it was straight to the sink. I was raised decent and so I’d intended to wash it myself, but if I wasn’t being shooed away, I was being distracted by another pastry or a lightning round of questions from my cousin, which required my whole brain’s efforts to push out one shitty translation after another.

Having such attendance was something I simply wasn’t used to, and I wanted more than anything to be useful. It became a game for me—how many dishes could I wash before she shooed me off? I’d wait for when she’d gone to the other room, then I’d rush to the sink, crank out my mug and a few others, plates if there was any. Her tap flowed slowly and it all felt delicate: the music of water trickling against ceramic, my gentle humming, loud enough for me to feel the vibrations but soft enough as not to alert my aunt, the window at my eye level depicting a scene I had yet to acclimate to, wild dogs lazy against the backdrop of the mountain’s base, December, golden and dry and waiting.

II. Laundry

I’m doing laundry as I write this, and I must admit, it’s hard to focus over the clink clink of my overalls in the dryer, the metal buttons and their respective latches demanding my audience. Clink, clink, clink.

Clink, I’m so lucky to have indoor laundry in my house, to have grown up with it. In college, this was almost nearly never the case and it was annoying in ways I hadn’t prepared for. My first year out the nest, we had to go down two flights of stairs to the creepy basement of our 200-year-old building. It was such a burden. One of my roommates often volunteered to brave it together, which was sweet of him, even if I rarely returned the favor. Clink. I couldn’t express this then, but I found the task so trying on my own that the brief moments of motivation I could muster had to be seized—they couldn’t be forced, even when he asked nicely. Clink, I always considered him more flexible than myself, although I doubt he’d agree; I fear he interpreted my repeated refusal as an unwillingness to offer him the same kindness, his fault, his fault, his—but it was always mine.

The following year, not only was our laundry room located in a creepy basement down two flights of stairs, but now it had moved to an entirely separate building. In all actuality, it wasn’t that much more challenging since our front door ended no more than 20 feet and a flight of stairs away from the main building’s entrance. I don’t remember doing laundry here much, but I do hold the memory of meeting another dear friend in the process. He lived across the walkway and I happened to catch him as he was leaving, excuse me, but do you happen to know where a girl has to go to do a little laundry around here, and he took me there himself. We didn’t truly become close until nearly a year and a half later, but every interaction I had with him in the meantime was a small gift, like a waft of moonlight breeze or spring linen in the soft breeze. As I ventured around my overly expensive college campus, his kindness was repaid by passing smiles and polite nods. Clink.

This year was also the one which I briefly lived in London, and doing laundry there was bloody fucking awful, as they say. Not only was it significantly more expensive, but I had to walk across campus to reach the maybe 10 washers and dryers that were used by the entire school’s population. It was, without fail, a hassle, particularly as I’d come with a nasty head-cold, and because I frequently forgot to eat vegetables or anything beyond a gas station croissant smothered in Nutella. London had brought on a fatigue that I simply wasn’t prepared for.

As terrible as it was, when I returned to silly-rich-people-college, I was unfazed, clink, grateful even, for the laundry room outside my building despite having to venture out. I could see inside it from my dorm’s window, so it wasn’t too hard to get the whole space to myself, even if I had to wait a bit later. Laundry has always been a task of endurance, but the bunnies who’d lie on the damp grass in the brief stretch of in-between yard made it worth it. Their whiskers would perk up, but their little frames would stay hunkered down by the bushes, completely unbothered. Bunnies get braver in the moonlight. I didn’t know this and I wouldn’t have without huffing and puffing Oxiclean down several steps of stairs in the years prior. It’s the little things, I guess.

Clink.

III. Sweeping

Sweeping is fantastic, but only on carpets. Something about the texture, the broom’s straw versus a withered carpet’s force of friction, it’s more delightful to me than any slime or kinetic sand or other tactile triumph. Brooms are fantastic objects—imagine being a witch’s car, a spiderweb’s worst nightmare, and a lonely janitor’s imaginary guitar, all rolled into one! Plus, there’s a certain reliability in brooms to be appreciated. As long as you can move your arms, you can sweep, no additional materials needed. However, most people traditionally include a dustpan into the mix, and that’s where you lose me. I don’t like dustpans, they feel especially limited in function next to their enchanting, multi-talented partner. What else can you really use a bulky, plastic dustpan for? Certainly not a plate, unless you feel like licking up all the dead skin and shoe grit from an unknown amount of feet. It has the shape to make a decent fan, but for reasons similar to the plate, I wouldn’t recommend it. It isn’t aerodynamic enough to be a frisbee. It isn’t curved enough to be a toy sailboat. I suppose it’d be good for swatting a disobedient child on the rear, but if you asked my grandmother, our family’s child-abusing virtuoso, it would most likely be far too gentle.

I like to sweep, but dustpans in their entirety make my blood boil far too much to finish the job. On the other hand, my hatred for dustpans creates an excuse for something far more worthwhile:

IV. Vacuuming

I pity the household dog or cat who tremors at the sound. They will never know the joy of a vacuum, in spite of all it’s audible overstimulation. I’m not one for loud noises either, but the magic of sucking a big pile of grit and nothingness into the vacuum’s open mouth is something childishly amusing. Vacuuming is full of taboo, that nervous glance around after something in the monster’s maw clicks just a smidge too sharp, the suspect feeling that your negligence has sucked up something it most likely shouldn’t have, knowing you’ve just pushed your only vacuum a millimeter closer to death, yet the relief in not having to deal with one more stray earring back or wandering bobby pin.

I really love sweeping crud into a pile and then vacuuming it up. It’s like feeding scraps to a pig, and I’m glad it pleases us both. I think often of the vacuum from the Teletubbies, the blue one with the crazy eyes and the nearly sentient nostril-tube. Noo-Noo, I’m being told his name is. Forget a Roomba. I want Noo-Noo in all his wild excellence.

V. Glass Cleaning

Wiping off glass and mirrors is another one I’m sort of fifty-fifty on. I like it, I like how perfectly clean those delicate surfaces look after, but anything less than perfection is almost worse than not cleaning it altogether. Streaks are the devil I say, do you hear me? The devil.

My mom is good at wiping off glass. We have a slidey door in my dining room, which requires attention for both it’s indoor and outdoor face. There’s something about a light-glass-rain combo which is so attractive to me, but in lieu of rain, the firework of blue erupting out a Windex nozzle works just fine. It’s a sign of spring when my mom finally cleans the glass door. After the long white winter, it’s like a notice for the whole house that outside time has once again become part of our regularly-scheduled programming.

Glass on the other windows is trickier because most of ours have netting covering them, a bug-screen which unfortunately prevents a clear view. The screens come off—I know this because I’ve pushed it out myself, on those rare teenage occasions when a bedroom window must suffice as door. It’s sort of a hassle. My mother, who was mainly responsible for such tasks, and who also suffers from many physical conditions, has a limited amount of umph to give. Making dinner and keeping our inside clean for 5 others was enough, I don’t blame her for her glass negligence. Especially when cleaning the bathroom mirror alone was enough to frustrate me out of completion. Because how exactly are you meant to finish wiping glass? You spray spray spray and then it’s all broad waves which you can feel burn in the shoulders, your ocean-fluorescent paper towel scrunched tight or pressed flat against itself, watching droplets turn into translucent strokes, staring at your reflection, arm tinted in ache, watching the hope drain out your eyes as you realize said stokes are here to stay—at least until you spray them again. Even when you get a decent set of wipes in, the tiny specs of damp dust clumped together linger, and really, can only be pushed off the edge of the mirror, which is a toughie if your mirror or window has any sort of border. In my professional experience, most segments of flat glass tend to have a frame. And so you push the bits around and around until the paper towel’s fibers begin clinging to the mix and your despair bubbles up into a horrified boil. It’s an endless, vicious cycle.

You have to stop wiping eventually, clean or not. It is an unfortunate truth, and perhaps an important reminder. Just like writing or any art, sometimes you just have to go at it until you can’t anymore. Usually by that point, it’s enough to see through what you started, or to see reflections of yourself, their clarifications, and to discern the places you still consider smudged for when you’ve recovered enough to circle back.

VI. Groceries

I began grocery shopping at a fairly young age, mostly out of necessity. No one in my household had a car before I turned 16. My aunt would occasionally take us to the store but she and her car were a little bit too old and damaged to go as frequently as we needed. Prior to her, my grandma, and subsequently my mother once grandma’s hips gave, made their monthly trips to Walmart on the big bad Pace bus, which stopped right outside our house and was awfully embarrassing for my child self. It was certified poor people behavior, through and through, and even when I was too young to truly understand what being poor meant, it felt like too much of a spotlight. I despised being dragged along—not only was it embarrassing, but the bus was crickety and too empty, plus I got carsick. My nausea competed with my sanity, stomach churning as my little fingers shook, trying so hard not to smash the loaves of bread in my lap, clutching them tighter when my mother began bitching about a supposed dirty look the cashier had thrown her or how much she hated making dinner.

When I got my first car, even though it was a real piece of trash, I worshipped the air it allowed me. I was overjoyed to run to the store for coffee creamer or cigarettes, but as the little money I had disappeared down my gas tank, and my academic-extracurricular schedule became increasingly cluttered, grocery shopping stopped being so fun. Especially as my family always wanted to do massive grocery runs, or more likely, wanted me to do massive grocery runs. We’d gotten too used to shopping excursions being a rarity. I guess it’s a good thing, shopping for longer chunks at a time, it can be much more efficient, but the scarcity led to several unhelpful impulses. We should get this while we have the chance. Everything is impermanent. Maybe the price of this chicken cutlet is at an all-time high, but who knows when we’d be back to the store. Get it now, while you can, before the stamps run out, before time runs out. Get it?

The anxiety surrounding efficiency is an undercurrent I feel constantly. A college friend and I used to argue when walking to class as she wanted to follow the sidewalk, whereas I wanted to cut diagonally through the grass. Objectively, it was faster to cut across, but she’d make plenty of good counterpoints: we had the time, it’d keep our shoes cleaner, she was wearing sandals and didn’t want to get itchy. I can’t deny that her argument was much stronger than mine, but being wasteful made my skin crawl so subtly that it took me a very long while to notice my abhorrence. That ridiculous internal demand for efficiency could easily turn a great afternoon into a terrible one, depending on my particular order of operations. God forbid I ever had to backtrack on a busy day.

This is why, as of late, I’ve been trying to take my sweet-slow-time whilst swimming amongst the produce. When my friends grocery shop, they lollygag through the lunchmeat, creep through the brie, careless, ready to be enchanted by the smell of baked bread or the last package of Tate’s Chocolate Chip Cookies, 40% off. Plus, the quality of food we eat seems overwhelmingly better when we take our time, and I like clipping coupons on my phone, it’s still satisfying even without scissors and paper. Grocery shopping has historically been a real pain-in-the-ass, but I’m learning that it doesn’t have to be.

VII. Junk Drawers

O, Beloved is my junk drawer!

Hark! The creek of it, that savory jingle of crap cumulating in the shadows, hidden from mine eyes, and mine own heart as consequence. It might be expected of me to denounce the junk drawer, but if you’re looking for support in breaking away from the unorganized wooden knapsacks of delight, you’ve come to the wrong place. At one point or another, all the containers in my bedroom have been junk drawers in their own right, and despite the inconveniences, I conceptually adore them. Stress-free, small-scale hoarding. What could be better? Perhaps I watched Tinker-Bell too much as a kid, but I know without a doubt, Tink would think junk drawers are better than Disneyland. The queer impulse to favor Silvermist (the water fairy) was almost bested by our leading lady time and time again, solely because I thought Tinkerbell had a good mind for resourcefulness. The world was her Lego box, why couldn’t it be mine as well?

Junk drawers are great. Cleaning them out is the awful part, and reason why it’s landed on this list. Throwing objects out tastes just akin to murder, muddled down–like cucumber water, perhaps? Call me dramatic, I fully agree. I do try my best to let go of accumulation, but how miserable it is to decide what objects will stay nestled in your cozy bedroom and which will drown amongst the muck in the bottom of the outside garbage can, so deathly cold, but not kind enough to be fully frozen. Imagine the sentimentality of Toy Story 3, perhaps, but applied to every Lego in a reasonably complex Lego kit, and then imagine everything in the whole world is a piece in that Lego kit. Literally, I mourn stuff.

I think others do this too, but I’m not sure. Everyone has their reasons, I suppose. Every semi-decent possession I willingly dispose of feels a bit like failure, like I ought to apologize on behalf of humanity and our terrible habit of surplus, yet attempting to justify why makes me sound way more into anthropomorphism than I feel is accurate. What happened to treating others the way they want to be treated? My objects treat me well; it’s only fair to follow suit.

I already know I’m destined to be one of those old women with a closet full of assorted scraps that would be just perfect for something I saw the other day on the facebooks. In fact, I can’t wait to be that person, I long for it, but seeing as my bedroom is sardine-can sized enough, every object I acquire now must earn its place amongst the little treasures that I already hold dear.

Junk drawers are like a waiting room, or maybe the backstage of some multi-talent T.V. show: a small pocket of space brimming with potential. My junk drawer full of delights, objects once familiar now lying dormant amongst their sleepy siblings. Memories compressed, stickers you’ve saved for years, iron-on patches you still intend to attach, all of them draped in their near instantaneous reminders of the varied details that made them worth keeping. A jar of notes, an envelope of cards, jewelry from people you haven’t spoken to in years, magazines, lace, and all of them feel, still, just how Gertrude Stein would describe them. Who do you kill?

The only silver lining about clearing out the drawer is getting shedding some responsibility as well. I may be down a sweater, but in my grief, I swear to lavish the remaining few with all the more care and intentionality. Chances are, my bedroom will stay neat for longer as well, which makes waking up more enjoyable. Sometimes I find things I can use for new purposes, or as gift to friends. If I can’t, then I put it back where it was and try again a few months later. It’s better than nothing.

Plus, certain junk drawers are meant to be useful just the way they are, just as junk. At my day job, we have a junk drawer full of random assorted office supplies. Nothing makes me happier than when someone asks me if I have a certain something, on the very likely chance that I do. I like replacing their hesitancy with assurance, their need, patiently waiting at my disposal, which relies on the random accumulation festering in my desk’s left pocket.