Housekeeping

My husband is a perfectionist.  Poor guy.  He’s married to me – the anti-perfectionist.  Well, I suppose that’s not entirely accurate.  I am very much a perfectionist about some things, but one of those things is not housework.  

My house is clean, but not spotless.  I don’t have an eat-off-the-floor clean house.  Dirty laundry is in the hamper, dishes are in the dishwasher waiting for the cycle to be run, stuff like that.  Once a week I do laundry.  Three or four times a week the dishwasher is run (with only two of us, it takes a few days to fill up).  The problem is the clean stuff.  Clean laundry often sits on the sofa, separated into piles (his work clothes, his t-shirts, towels, my stuff, etc.) waiting to be folded and put away, sometimes for the entire workweek.  The pile naturally gets smaller each day as clean clothing is retrieved to be worn, but finding the time to actually fold everything and put it away is a trick I’ve yet to master.  Same goes for the clean dishes in the dishwasher, although I usually do end up emptying it within two days of the dishes being washed, mostly so I have somewhere to put dirty dishes.  

And then there is the stuff waiting to be read.  On the end table next to my “spot” on the sofa is a small pile of magazines and books, all in various stages of being read.  Right now I have four magazines, two books, and one newspaper sitting here.  I will get to them eventually.  Or not.  Sometimes, the magazines get tossed without being read thoroughly.  The books may end up back in the bookcase, bookmarks firmly in place, to be finished at a later date.  The newspapers get perused quickly, then go to the trash usually each week.  

My husband hates this pile.  He hates the mound on my dresser worse.  It is comprised of stuff to be filed – bills, bank statements, owner’s manuals or recently acquired items, and who knows what else – all stuff I have deemed necessary that must be filed in the 4-drawer filing cabinet next to my dresser. About once every three months I attack the pile.  It drives me crazy, but I just don’t look at it.  

Clutter is my biggest enemy.  And my poor husband has to put up with it – or clean it himself – which he does every now and then.  Last Sunday was one of those “now and thens”.  In anticipation of my brother’s arrival, we cleaned house.  The place is almost spotless.  The clutter on the kitchen counter is gone.  The laundry is put away.  The dishwasher is empty.  The pile is still on my dresser, though.  

The biggest thing I did, though, was clean the fish tank.  It was pretty sad.  Algae covered the sides.  I was down to three fish – a killer opaline gourami who single-handedly killed 30 other fish that used to live with him in the tank, a cory catfish that somehow escaped the gourami, and a golden plecostomus that started off about 2” long, but grew to over 8” long in about 4 months.  (It is huge, ugly, prehistoric, and does a pretty terrible job of keeping the tank clean – the only real reason to have a plecostomus – but I’ve had it for two years, so I can’t bring myself to part with it.)  

Sunday I attacked the tank.  I vacuumed it, removing over half the water.  I took the plants out (fake ones) and washed the algae off them.  I completely cleaned the filter, the hood, scraped the algae off the glass, and filled it with clean water.  The tank had always suffered from way too few plants.  My husband liked a Spartan look.  Unfortunately, fish don’t.  I was finally able to convince him of this, reminding him of the beautiful tanks we had seen in the doctor’s office a few months ago and how full of plants they were.  I told him fish need to be able to hide and we didn’t have enough plants for them to do that.  We do now.  It’s really beautiful.  I then bought more fish – two dwarf gouramis, 6 tiger barbs, 6 neons, and 2 zebra danios.  The Killer Gourami is going away.  The fish store has agreed to take him in trade for more fish.  When I put the new fish in the tank, KG immediately went after them, reaching out his little feelers/antennas to touch and antagonize them, especially the new gouramis.  Sadly, today three tiger barbs were dead, but they were Wal-Mart fish. I don’t usually buy fish from Wal-Mart – there are usually more dead fish in their tanks than live ones – but I wanted 6 tiger barbs and the fish store only had two in stock, so I took a chance.  3 of 4 have died.  Oh well.  I’ll get a refund and check to see if the fish store has had a new shipment come in yet.  The other fish are doing great, despite constant harassment from KG.  He has got to go.

So, my house looks awesomely clean.  My fish tank is in the best shape yet. I have the day off, though the projects in which I am embroiled are nagging at me, and I have been working from home since 6 AM.  My brother will be here in a couple of hours.  They’re showing dolphins playing in the water just 100 yards offshore in Hermosa Beach, CA on Fox 11 Good Day LA.  Dolphins!  In Southern California!  How cool!  How come I never saw dolphins in all my years growing up at the beach?  Global warming.  Must be the reason.  The dolphins think they’re in Hawaii, or Miami.  It’s not warming here.  It’s supposed to maybe snow mixed with rain today.  No dolphins in Lake Pend Oreille.  Rats.