The Chore Trap

A house is a beast by itself. It enslaves and ties one up with an innumerable and inexhaustible array of chores. Irrespective of whether one has a help to assist with domestic work or one does it all by oneself, there is never a dearth of these chores to complete. And the trap here is, being caught up in a constant whirl of chores lulls you with a false sense of productivity and achievement.

The chores may vary slightly from house to house, depending upon what chore falls on your head to what gets done by the help, but the essence is this -KEEP CLEANING TILL YOU DIE. Don't you agree? 

The chores come in varying degrees...

• everyday chores that includes 
• Cooking -the one major activity that involves a hoard of sub activities around it -starting from grocery shopping, shopping for veggies, breaking your head as to what to cook today / tomorrow/ this whole week-morning & evening, chopping the veggies, cleaning the kitchen after the cook & the biggest after-chore, which is....
• washing the vessels and sorting them back in the kitchen rack -I despise this chore of sorting with every fibre in the body. Thank God my mother in law does this everyday & step in only when she is not in town
• Milk management -boiling milk for coffee & for setting to curd. keeping track of which packet milk to use first. 
• sweeping
• cleaning the entrance of the house & drawing kolam
• laundry - (dumping the clothes in the machine, hanging them dry, folding them & the part I hate the most, putting them in the closet), 
• taking out the garbage
• filling water bottles -this is never ending. We are a family of camels disguised as humans. All 4 of us keep doing this chore atleast twice a day. 
• Chores that needs to be done every other day / once in two or three days
• Cleaning the toilet, bathroom, washbasin, kitchen sink
• Mopping the house
• Sweeping the area around the house
• Dusting. How does so much dust gets generated? how they come to sit on equipment that we use EVERYDAY!? Why is it that the dust is visible only to my eye? I have found a trick around this chore. I have a dusting cloth hanging at handy places all around the house. Whenever the film of dust gets too thick for comfort, I whip out the cloth and attack just that one place, instead of trying to dust the whole house in one shot. 
• Chores that needs to be done every fortnight / month
• Clearing the cobwebs 
• Changing & washing the bedsheets
• Chores that gets done once or twice a year because God save my sanity -when it reaches the threshold of tolerance level to clutter & chaos 
• Cleaning the wardrobe

This is just a gist of the chores. I am sure I have missed out on many. Also, I have purposefully left out items like cleaning the fan, washing the upholstery etc because I am embarrassed to share the amount of time that elapses between the instances I get that done.

But the underlying point of this whole rant is this. The chores take up so much of our time and energy that they leave us mentally and physically exhausted. There are times when I consciously avoid doing the chores -like this morning as I am typing out this piece. It is because, I know that if I start folding the clothes & sweeping the house, I will not have any motivation to sit and type this out. I would have been  busy patting my back for a chore well done. 

As they call in the management lingo, chores are 'busy work'. They are mundane activity that needs little or no creativity. But they are a necessary evil, because, atleast for me,I can't settle down to work if the place around me is dirty / chaotic / cluttered. So this becomes a case of damned if you did, damned if you didn't. 

But after all these years, I have understood the trick that works for me. Always prioritize the urge / motivation to create. Everything else can wait & can be done later. If I foolishly chose to work on the chore, then I get carried away with the feeling of accomplishment that comes with getting things done & completely lose motivation to work / create. 

After all, the nature of chores is that they are never ending, ever demanding & they have to be done -one way or the other. No escape!!