To Those People with Whom I Share House,
I officially submit my notice to strike!
From here on out, until my family members decide to start pitching in, or until our house is featured on the TV show “Hoarders” I will no longer be carrying the burden of maintaining this house and all contents within it, by myself. This includes the following:
Laundry – I will now be washing my own clothes. And if you decide, in a passive-aggressive attempt to force me to do laundry, by shoving 50 pounds of laundry into the washer all at once, and inevitably the washer breaks, or explodes, you will be buying me a new washing machine. I am not doing any more of your laundry. I don’t care if you run out of socks. I don’t care if you only have shorts to wear, when it 50 degrees outside.
Drying – I will no longer be taking any clothes out of the dryer and folding and/or hanging them up, other than my own. If I have laundry of my own to do, I will simply take your clothes out and place them on top of the dryer, then I will put them back when my clothes are done.
Dishes – I will no longer be loading or unloading the dishwasher. I will simply take out the things I need, halfway through the cycle, and oops, forget to push the “Resume” button.
Garbage – The garbage can over flow, the recycling debris can stack up on the kitchen table. I will wait for an eternity for someone else to take it to the recycling can, and in the meantime, pretend I don’t see it.
Meals – No longer will I be deciding what everyone should eat. I may have eyes in the back of my head, I may have ears that rival that of a bat’s and I may have the nose of a bloodhound, but I have no way of knowing what it is you want to eat either tonight for dinner, or while grocery shopping for the next week’s meals. Please do not lay this responsibility on me. I don’t mind paying for take-out, I don’t even mind going to get it once in a while, but do not make me feel I have failed you because I can’t come up with a restaurant that everyone agrees on. I will happily eat cereal and toast.
Refrigerator – I will no longer be cleaning out the fridge, or for that matter restocking the water bottles in the refrigerator door. I am okay with tap water.
Water bottles – No longer will I be picking up every half-empty water bottle left and forgotten around the house. I will no longer be emptying all of these water bottles out (and complaining the whole time about how much water is wasted at our house, and how we might actually be able to refill our depressingly empty water reservoirs here in California with this wasted bottled water).
Beds – I am only going to make my bed from now on. I don’t care if you enjoy getting into a well-made bed at the end of the day. If you cared that much about having a tidy bed to climb into, it strikes me that you would take the extra two minutes in the morning to ensure it was made. Same goes for changing sheets. I will change only my sheets. If you do not enjoy crunchy sheets that haven’t been changed in several weeks, I suggest you put down your phones and go change the sheets, and wash the dirty ones.
Frequently used items – All those items you use every day will stay in exactly the same place you threw them after using them. I do not understand why you people cannot put these items tidily back in the place you took them from. Deodorant, toothpaste, hairbrushes can just lay haphazardly on the counter, 2 cm from where they should be. And as these items creep further and further away from where they should be, and then, whoops, suddenly disappear, don’t come running to me, so I will get up and find them. Not going to do that anymore.
Items of importance which are missing – I refuse to look for your items that you have misplaced. Because you have some weird preconceived notion that your time is so much more important than mine, and you can just fling your items around the house haphazardly, and expect to find them the next morning, but in all actuality cannot find them – don’t expect that I will be the person to hunt for them. I won’t do it anymore. I will lie on the sofa, staring blankly at my phone, and allow you to have a total fit (which I will completely ignore) while you look for the misplaced item. I am not going to help you.
Dishes, blenders, pots – I will no longer be washing anything that is thrown into the kitchen sink. It will stay there until you decide you can’t tolerate the mess anymore. If mold grows on the top of said items, I will look with interest at this new growth, but not clean whatever it is.
Bathrooms – I am no longer going to clean the toilets (although I will keep mine clean). I will no longer replace the toilet paper in all the bathrooms, or the packs of flushable wipes. If you find yourselves in compromising positions of questionable cleanliness and do not have the appropriate tools to rectify the situation, do not expect me to come running with replacements – I will be lying on the sofa staring either at my phone or the television, or I might be blogging. You are on your own.
Terms of strike – This strike will remain in place until I see some motivation and improvement in the behavior around our house. I have spent the last 20 years basically waiting on you hand and foot, and I was okay with that when you were little. But you are grown adults, who have jobs and pay taxes and drive cars. My time is just as valuable as yours, and I should be able to relax when I am at home, just as you do.
This strike will be hard on me as well, because I like a tidy, nice smelling house, where everything is in its place, and things are easy to find. But I am longer no willing to sacrifice my sanity, my relaxation time, and doing the things I enjoy, just because you don’t feel like doing certain things. I know you figure sooner or later I will get fed up and just do everything myself, but not this time. This time I will persevere.
Please note – to those members of our family who do not have opposable thumbs, I will continue to feed you, ensure you have water and a clean place to live.
Image Credit – abcnews.com