Domestic Diptych
Do you have any little devices to make housework less boring? When I hang washing on the line, I have to colour-code the pegs to match the laundry. And when I say ‘have to’, it’s not much of an exaggeration. Eight or nine years ago I decided that if I had to hang the washing out, I may as well make a game of it. I started out dutifully inspecting each piece of clothing, reaching into the peg bucket for the closest colour I could manage, sometimes deliberating over which shade of faded green was closer to the well-worn eucalyptus colour of dad’s work shirts. I guess over time it’s just become a habit, and if I tried, I bet it would be harder to break than it should be.
I was jolted into the awareness that I still match pegs to pants when Mum helped me with the washing the other day. She handed me a couple of pegs so I could hang a yellow shirt on the line, and I unintentionally blurted “but they’re the wrong colour!” It was a moment before I realised that it wasn’t, in fact, crucial to the state of the washing if I used a red peg instead. Pegging the washing out today, I watched bemusedly as my hand went straight for the faded red (now pink) pegs to hang my favourite fluffy towel, and I dug to the bottom of the bucket for a few remaining wooden pegs to hang out a brown skirt. Choosing multi-coloured items out of the basket makes the task just a little more rewarding – a blue and green top gets one peg of each colour, as does the red and white tea towel. Rainbow polka-dotted undies mean I can choose just about any colour I like, which makes for a few very enjoyable seconds as I deliberate between the shiny red or the little-used yellow.
I dare say my little quirk adds at least an extra minute to the process of hanging the washing out, and it’d be quicker if I just grabbed the pegs that are on top and got the job done. But it wouldn’t be half as interesting, now, would it?
February 15th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
ummm, I dunno about chores. But I used to do it with my food. Corn Flakes were ships and the sugar was little settlements and they were being destroyed by first and impending flood, and then by a giant machine that was decimating the fleet, while settlements would fight amongst each other for the last remnants of land that was available…. Weetbix was kinda like mountains/deserts, and Ricebubbles were human capsules. …that was the secret to why I used to eat with so much milk and sugar… lol.
Oh did the same thing with toasted sandwiches!! I’d eat them diagonally so there wee a set of steep slopes and steps that these group of survivors would try to run up as the world around them was being shredded…. lol, Also why I ate so much toast as a kid (P.S. the game is more fun with two slices, not one).
So… yeah…
…but umm… for cleaning, Nah I just got kicks out of things being clean. heh.
February 15th, 2010 at 11:26 pm
wow. you like killing things!
Is this where the refugee camps moving to higher ground as the tidal waves took out their cities developed from? I see patterns, and they are Hitler kind of patterns! :-S
February 15th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Killing or people fighting to survive a losing battle… i’m not helping my case.
February 16th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
I’m more of a get the washing on the line as fast as humanly possible and not worry about pegs or if things are even hung out nicely! seriously most of the time I dont peg anything – except for socks and other…unmentionables lmao!
My kitchen at home is in the shape of half a hexagon with 3 windows that have a pretty cool view down over kingston and the water And when I’m cooking tea (every night at the moment) I like to pull back all the blinds open all the windows and have my laptop sitting on the bench blasting out whateva music I feel like at the time and I often dance along. This dancing however does not help using large sharpe knives or vegetable peelers though – as I have often discovered. Its cool because its right at the time of day when the windows catch a lot of sun and the breeze comes in ahhh lovely!
Hmmmm I have also taken to showering to a selection of happy and hyper songs that go for 3 minutes lately. This way I get to wake up with a bit of a dance and shower singing session but I am also responsibly timing how long I am in the shower seeing as I say to myself that I have to get out again by the time the song finishes! My current fave is I like You SO Much Better When Your Naked (lol no shower pun intended) by Ida Maria – 3.12 minute showers thank you very much!!!