Keeping House

(A.K.A. Housewife Challenge #2)

The house is done.  Everything is unpacked and put away, the pictures are hung, flowers are in the window boxes, and it’s clean.

Or…it was clean.  You see, we don’t have a dishwasher.  Correction, we don’t have an electric dishwasher, we have me, the human dishwasher.  And if you know me, you know I don’t like to do dishes.  Which is why I shortly vetoed the “cook doesn’t have to do the dishes” rule after we got married; because who always cooked?  And who always got stuck with the dishes?

Nope, back then I voted for equal dish-washing (under the guise of spending more time together) and you should see Chris whip though a pile of dishes after having to wash all his own in culinary school.  But now we don’t have a dishwasher, or a hubby at home for lunch or dinner, so there’s plenty of dishes piling up for me to do.  Dishes that are reminding me that staying home with Nora isn’t just about teaching her to play catch or swinging at the park.

It’s also about making sure we have a nice, clean, functioning house to come home to after the park.  And that means doing the dishes.  By hand.  And doing laundry and making the bed and sweeping the floor at least every other day to combat the massive amount of little red hairs that fly off of Pip each day.  I’m happy to do all of it, even the dishes, but I’m quickly learning that keeping house is going to be my second housewife challenge.

Because it’s so easy to leave chores until later when there’s new grass waiting for our blanket

and strange things like crayons to figure out.

And between all the fun stuff with Nora, there’s business, too.  Like diaper changes, nursing, waiting patiently for her to feed herself oatmeal (because she would rather do it herself, even if it takes longer), putting her down for naps (then putting her down again after Pip wakes her up), making her baby food, thinking up new ways to entertain her (because she doesn’t just want to sit on my lap at the computer anymore), and kissing away the head bumps she gets several times a day trying to crawl. Then, in the hour or two I might get during her naps, I’m trying to shove in some work for the master’s program for which I used to direct recruiting, fun time for me on the computer, some writing on the blog, and…where did the time go?  Ladies and gentlemen, it’s not as easy as it looks.  Suddenly, I’m realizing that even without the full-time job, taking care of a baby and a dog and a house and myself is still a balancing act.

I promised myself that I was going to be be better about this house than I was in the last.  I would like to make our “real” house a little bit closer to the “fake” house I scramble to put together before company visits.  I just know now that keeping the promise, keeping house, might be more challenging than I thought.