I’m (almost) done with Day 1 and holy crap am I exhausted. I think I figured out why women didn’t have any rights in the 1950s–you can’t fight the patriarchy if you’re fucking exhausted from doing eight million daily loads of laundry (and no, I’m not exaggerating that number. I’m offended you’d even suggest that).
Day 1 got off to a bit of a rocky start. I’m not a great sleeper at the best of times, and last night my brain decided that I needed to stay awake until the sun started to rise because why the fuck not? It got to the point where I was lying in bed, wide awake, wondering if I’d reached a new stage of human evolution to where I didn’t need sleep. Either that, or I was about to become Al Pacino in Insomnia.
Then I finally passed out and got a late start to my day, which is exactly how you want to feel when embarking on a new project. I did my usual homeschool stuff with Kiddo and then I decided to tackle the challenge. Things started out pretty well and I was feeling great about the progress I was seeing in the house. Was it perfect? No, but it was cleaner! The house felt brighter! Everything was better!
And then I started on the “weekly” task of deep cleaning the bedrooms.
Our bedroom wasn’t even that dirty, but scrubbing every little nook and cranny still took forever. At one point, Jon walked in as I was taking down the curtains to wash them.
“You’re washing the curtains?” he asked. “Why, are we moving?”
“It’s on the list!” I screeched in a totally normal tone of voice. He backed away slowly, making sure to never turn his back on me.
I took care of our bedroom before moving on to Kiddo’s room, which went a little faster once I’d gotten the hang of everything and didn’t have to keep checking my to do list. Overall it was fine, but I have now become aware of exactly how many linens we actually have in our house. Before today, I thought decorative pillows were kind of nice because I’m a basic bitch and Target owns my soul. Now, after having to wash them all goddamn day, I’m thinking they’re a gigantic waste of time and space. It’s 9PM as I’m writing this and the washer and dryer are still running, which is really cutting into my instructions to “enjoy an evening of relaxation.”
As anticipated, I chose to ignore a few of the daily tasks that pertain to me being polite and dolled up at the end of the day. I’m still wearing leggings and my “Filthy Mouthed Wife” t-shirt instead of changing into something more “festive” for the evening, but I did, as promised, make sure I was wearing deodorant so Jon would be more inclined to want to sit by me on the couch while we re-watch old seasons of Survivor.
As I lay draped across the couch, exhausted from scrubbing nooks and crannies I didn’t know existed in the bedrooms, I told Jon I was supposed to “greet him gayly” at the end of his workday.
“Does that just mean you’re going to say hello while you do awkward finger guns?” he asked.
Even though I’ve spent the bulk of this post whining about how tired I am, I’m overall pleased with how today went for Day 1 of this challenge. The house feels cleaner and enjoying it now in the evening while I wait for the laundry to finish feels kind of like a reward. It’s not like our house was a disaster area before this; with an immunocompromised kid, things are generally pretty clean around here. But because I spent the bulk of my day cleaning, it does feel kind of nice to enjoy the house in its current state. However, other than doing school stuff with Kiddo earlier, I had absolutely no room in my day for anything else. But, that being said, hopefully I’ve worn myself out enough so I’ll actually get some sleep tonight.
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Emily Regan 
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