My personal housekeeping nightmare

I hate doing the dishes, full stop!! I hate washing up!! I hate drying dishes!! You want to know why I hate it so much? Because as a kid, I had to dry the dishes from the age of three till I was about eight years old, then when my Grandmother started working.

From then, it became my job to both wash and dry the dishes. There were other members in the household who were fully capable of washing and drying dishes, but this job was not assigned to them, only me. My brothers were male, they did as little as possible because my Grandmother had an issue with asking males to help around the house. Maybe it had something to do with being physically and verbally abused whenever she asked. My older sisters were teenagers, and they had moved on from doing such paltry and meaningless tasks, to other mind-numbing activities such as listening to the Top 40 on the radio, while mooning over a picture of their favourite music artist. There was my younger sister, and she was too young to help out at three years of age (although I was already commissioned to housework by that age…to what? You guessed it!!! Drying dishes…).

If someone decided to try their hand at domesticity and wash the dishes, drying them was a useless exercise as they were usually so greasy from inadequate amounts of dishwashing liquid that even picking them up required a steely grip to prevent them slipping out of my grasp and onto the floor. It was often easier to just re-wash them all. Such incompetency from family members caused me to contain my frustration within, only to boil over at inopportune times over the most trivial things. I still detest doing the dishes, and I will leave the dishes to pile up until I can’t stand the sight of them spilling over the sink and surrounding bench space anymore, only to put aside my loathing to just get the job done as quickly as possible.

I love dishwashers as I can pile up the dishes in an out-of-sight place until it’s full. Ah, but then comes having to put them away. Certainly no where near as awful a task as the washing and drying processes, though close. This activity is a challenge because low, deep cupboards have dark corners which I have major trouble seeing into, as well as shelves out of line of my poor limited vision. When I was young, our cupboards were full of cockroaches, little ones as well as big ones. Putting my hands into darkened cupboards always resulted in a creepy-crawly skittering across my hand or up my arm. To flick it off quickly, I’d catch my hand on the edge of a shelf and cause significant pain and bruising. Cockroaches are the most despicable creatures…urghhhh!! I avoid them like the plague.

Even though the home I live in is clean, ingrained fears and habits still remain a part of my psyche, leading to actions that could definitely do with improvement. Having housemates or partners that enjoy doing dishes is crucial for my continued sanity and life expectancy. It would be such as a shame to have an obituary notice with the title, “Eleni Seitis, sadly passed away due to a mountain of dirty dishes crashing on top of her as she contemplated preparing breakfast without having to disturb the carefully structured pile.” Hahaha…instead of compassion, I would laugh mirthlessly at such a notice. I believe it’s now time to go to my favourite coffee shop for lunch so there’s no dishes to wash…lol…