No one likes chores. Except for maybe Brad (see above for animated interpretation of Legal at home). He stays up for 1 – 2 hours after I go to sleep for his “piddle” which is, I am told, him cleaning the kitchen and rearranging things. (I can confirm that the kitchen is rearranged when I wake up in the morning.)
I get why chores are important; I’d just rather be doing something else. Like reading a book. Drinking water. Masturbating. Writing this piece. Truly anything. I like a clean home and a clean dish and a made bed or whatever, but getting there always feels like, well, a chore.
So, with that, here is my ranking of chores from least worse to worst.
Walking the Dog
I don’t have a dog. So I imagine this is actually quite pleasant. You have to pick up poop, sure, but at least you’re getting outside. Also, dogs!
Doing the Dishes
Maybe it’s because I’m a Pisces but I like the feeling of water going over my hands. The sink just has to be big enough so my hands can actually move around some and it doesn’t feel like I’m cutting the wires to a timebomb. If you’re fortunate enough to have a dishwasher, this all feels so much easier.
Laundry (Doing)
Not to be confused or combined with Laundry (folding) [see below]. There’s something very satisfying about taking dirty clothes and cleaning them. I also like doing things like emptying the lint filter and smelling the detergent as you pour it in. And again, water.
Full disclosure, I’m talking only about doing laundry using a washer and dryer. If this were industrial era scrubbing with a washboard and pressing through those giant rollers, this would be much lower, like with folding.
Scrubbing the Toilet
Ok I dislike this, yes, but to me it’s the smallest of chores that has the largest output. It only takes 5 – 10 minutes. There are tools that are created specifically to clean the toilet and keep you at a safe distance, and the actually scrubbing, if done frequently enough, is pretty painless.
The difference between a dirty toilet and a clean toilet can make or break a home. If a guest suddenly says they’re going to drop by, this is the one thing that I’ll make sure gets done. Dishes may be piled up in the sink and my underwear could be all over the living room (unfolded, see below) but I’ll still make sure the toilet is clean.
Mowing the Lawn (2022)
I have not mowed the lawn since maybe 2001. But I imagine in 2022 it’s a lot easier than it was back then. Now you can drive a lawn mower and use noise cancelling headphones, instead of pushing a machine around in the New England humidity, emptying the bag out in the woods behind your house every 10 minutes, while listening to Britney Spears’ Oops!... I Did it Again (album) on a Discman and trying to concentrate on the beat over the motor. Kids, you don’t know how lucky you are to have Spotify.
Vacuuming
OK, now we’re getting into the lousy ones. I dislike the weight of the vacuum, lugging it around corners, the frustration when it doesn’t pick up what you want it to, the wire getting all tangled, having to plug and unplug and plug again. In an earlier time this would be much further down the list, but we recently went bougey and got a Dyson vacuum that is wireless so that’s an improvement. Not that I do it, but it’s an improvement.
Laundry (Folding)
Oh my god I hate this so much. I don’t know why this part of finishing laundry feels like such a mountain, but it is. As in, specifically a mountain of clothes on a chair in my house that I don’t want to fold and put away. (See Organization below for related content.) I had a roommate once who said he’d rather burn all of his dirty clothes and buy new ones every time instead of folding his laundry and honestly, I kind of understand that rage. Why? I don’t know. But it’s there.
Dusting
No matter how often I do it, it’s never done. What’s that whole Greek thing, of the guy rolling the boulder up the hill for all of eternity? That’s me, but the boulder is actually a ball of dust. I’m chasing it around the apartment and when I’ve finally caught it, another one blows by. Anyway. Don’t come visit. I have a clean toilet but there’s dust everywhere.
Cleaning the Bathroom (General)
Note that the bathroom as a whole is separate from the toilet as a feature. Cleaning the bathroom was our job growing up. Every Sunday night my sister and I split the chores in the bathroom we shared. I would do the sinks, counters and mirrors, and Quinn’s job was to do the toilet and, inexplicably, rearrange the towels. I feel like she got both ends of the spectrum and I had the average of the two – not as unpleasant as cleaning the toilet, but not as easy as rearranging the towels. This is a decent effort to output ratio, but I do hate cleaning the sink, especially now that I have facial hair and it’s just constantly scrubbing and trying to get rid of small hairs until finally I just give up and go lie down and make peace with it.
Scrubbing the Shower
This is far worse than scrubbing the toilet, and it’s a different arena than cleaning the bathroom (general). This is an awful chore. Hair and soap scum and just – oof. It’s gnarly. I wish I could do it like they do at the gym and power wash it with a giant hose once a day, in what looks like soap and water coming out of the same nozzle. (Yes?) Actually, I wish I could do that for my whole house.
Organization (General)
I’m really bad at this. (He’s self-aware, reader!) I’m sure that’s why I find it so frustrating. Brad, on the other hand, is very good at it. I essentially will shove anything into whatever space I can. Brad methodically creates spaces for specific things. It makes it so much easier to manage as part of day-to-day life; I just don’t have the Marie Kondo vision of it all. So, this is one where I clearly benefit while inputting nothing. Anyway. Thank you, to our home’s Legal department for all the organization.
Making Breakfast
Is this even a chore?, you may be asking. And you’re right, traditionally this would not land on my list. But I was trying to do double-duty and make breakfast while I wrote this. It didn’t go well. Now breakfast is burned. There’s hot oil all over the stove that I’ll have to clean up. So making breakfast is last on my list of chores right now. Time to go walk the dog I don’t have.