CLAUD

Friday, August 06, 2010

Spring cleaning in Summer

I don't know how my mum did it in the past and she wasn't kidding when she said 'Your dad has a lot of junk'.

My dad was sending over some stuff over to my maid because there wasn't enough space in her luggage. So he asked me to pack in some household items that we didn't want and they could use.

So after packing, I got carried away and decided to do something about the messy storeroom. Last time my mum used to spend hours in the 15cm by 15cm space in the storeroom and I used to wonder what is there to pack in the first place since it was already filled with stuff anyway.

I found out today.

Firstly, my dear father is a hoarder. Lucky for the Wong family, he's also a relatively neathoarder which according to contemporary standards meant that "Screws are with other Screws, and Hammers are with other Hammers".

To a conventional guy, hey, what would be enough right?

However, for the person packing, it's pretty irritating when you have stuff dropping out of nowhere. Or see that there's precious storage space wasted become someone (namely my dad) was lazy to arrange stuff so as to maximise that space. Furthermore, I found expired breath mints amongst things that don't belong together, namely, screws and hammers - at this point, I snapped and went into a frenzy of packing the storeroom....

So starting from the box that my aunt conveniently brought over when my mum was still at home that is taking up carpet space in my parents' room which makes vacuuming extremely inconvenient. So in goes my mum's medical supplies and other rubbish....and out goes an SPOILT iron, an empty LAPTOP BOX (how did that end up in the storeroom instead of the rubbish still appalls me) and some other expired medical stuffs. I even managed to clear up a space to put toilet rolls and tissue paper boxes. Not to mention throwing out an old CPU, monitor and scanner, storing the wires and re-routing the electrical system so that switching on a light and my handphone charger took one attempt instead of 2. It was a feat and before I knew it, 3 hours have flew past.

(as you already might have figured out by now, I am OCD when it comes to household cleanliness, not as much as my mum, but enough)

NOW I know how my mum can spend hours clearing the storeroom and seem to not make any progress...Because it's a battle we can never win.

So doing housework was proving a little back-breaking - literally. I'm starting to feel my age. HAHAHA!

Today while talking to XY, a thought just hit me...in this day and age of our generation, how many people really do housework anymore? Like sewing, keeping a house clean may seem like a lost skill.

Gosh...I can already hear the maid agencies cheering in name of profit making. In any case, I strongly believe that cleaning your own house gives you a sense of ownership and belonging that is beyond description.

It makes you

1) Less careless about where you put your things when there's no one clearing up after you because you get frustrated half the time FINDING the thing you've misplaced.

2) More careful about your personal habits like scratching your scalp and getting hair all over the floor or wearing and discarding clothes carelessly because now you have to wash and iron them

3) and last but not least, treasure the furniture you buy.

My mum taught me well and my dad showed me that MEN can also do housework as well as women. In fact, my dad actually does equal, if not more housework than my mum. =D

Housework is indeed invisible work. Yet, when a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it mean it did not fall? The results of our mother's silent contribution is something we should make an effort to take over someday. Because eventually, no one is going to clean up after you and do you really want yo live with ants and roaches?

21:58