I got up early with Mark this morning to make his bento and also to try and motivate myself to clean.  My kitchen is LONG overdue for a serious mopping, and I figured early in the morning would be a good time to apply myself to that.  So far, it's half-mopped.  I allowed myself to get distracted by things like Mark's iPod being annoyed at his improper device removal (which I fixed in a matter of seconds, but just a moment too late to be able to send it with him to work...  Too bad, he was pretty bummed when he left here.) and by our budget worksheet and plans.

Of all the domestic tasks I am expected to fulfill in my duty as housewife, I can tell you the three chores I hate the most:

3: Emptying the dishwasher

2: Folding and putting away the laundry

1: MOPPING

In that order.  I'll empty the dishwasher before I fold the laundry, but I'll fold the laundry before I bust out the mop.  It's very counter-productive of me, honestly, to have such a strong aversion to the mop, but honestly I am just really NOT good at it.  Like, I suck.  A lot.  I'll vacuum no problem.  I'll sweep, even, but when it comes to actually wet-mopping the floors, I'm a horrible failure.  I try to keep my house relatively clean, but I'm ashamed to admit that since we moved here, I've attempted the Swiffer trend once (which you may recall was a waste of time, effort and money) and have not truly mopped the floors at all.  How sick is that?  So today, motivation partially in hand, I pulled out the mop and bucket and mopped exactly half of the kitchen floor.  It looks significantly better, but I still have issues with my motivation to continue on and mop the rest.

Mopping hurts my arms, my back, and my psyche.  I hate that you have to sweep, then mop, then let dry and sweep again.  And if you're in a house like this one (and all of the houses I've lived in so far), the floor is old.  And it's stained and imperfect.  And no matter how much you mop, it's never going to look shiny and new.  It's still going to have big chips, scratches, gouges, stains...  And it'll feel like you spent all that energy mopping for a mediocre result.  And after you've swept-mopped-swept, you'll probably still see things wrong and if you're anal like I am, you'll feel compelled to go through with a sponge and do "hands-and-knees-mopping", like my mom used to call it.  This is basically the worst task EVER, and consists of you literally getting down on your hands and knees with the mopping bucket, and scrubbing each stain away in a highly painful manner.  Seriously, this is the kind of cleaning they are talking about when they say "elbow grease".  And it just makes me angry and tired and..  angry.

Now that I've complained about it and procrastinated a long time with the sunrise and the web surfing, I suppose I should go back to the kitchen and make some more progress.  My mop is propped up against the dryer singing "baby come back."