- Our household no longer has a maid. The maid has split into three. Me, mom and sister.
Every day after work, I get home and I get right to cleaning the dishes and the kitchen. Maybe take down the laundry if I still have time after prepping fruits. I have to prep these fruits because they decompose at the rate my parents buy them (assuming as though we still have a maid who cuts these fruits whenever we want them).
The house is infinitely cleaner (and also a little more messy). No one bothers to make their beds. Because making your bed anyway has got to be the World's most useless household chore. It doesn't make the place cleaner, freer of dust, or neater. You make your bed in the morning, leave the house the entire day where there is no one to enjoy the visual delight of a tidy bed. Then you return in the evening and up-end the pillows and the bolsters and the blankets in your sloppy, hasty need for sleep. Weekends are no better. The bed is never made, even though we occasionally glimpse it upon entering our rooms. There are some corners that should be cut, anyway, to maintain some semblance of sanity. When there are 3 working adults and 1 full-time student in the house. Everyone is always busy. We have no idea how other families cope without maids. I ask around, and people tell me they have this grandmother or that stay-at-home housewife mom, who does the bulk of the chores. For families that are fully employed, they hire a part-timer on weekends.
I think that might become our reality soon.
Signs that you have no maid a.k.a. conversations with Sister:
Sis: There is no cover for the rice container!! Go and find it!
Me: Aiyah, never mind lah. Let's just leave it first
Sis: But the weevils will come!
Me: I don't know where the cover is, you go and find it yourself.
.....
Sis: Let the weevils come then.
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Me: Sister you want to eat some fruits? I go and cut them, what type you want?
Sister: [ponders].....What's the dying fruit of the day?
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My mother is obsessed with cleaning corners of the house she never knew existed when we had a maid. I get extremely grouchy and very quick to temper when people disturb me in the kitchen, or dictate to me to cook this or that when I'm trying to save every dying vegetable (cos there's nobody automatically cooking them, unlike before). But I'm pretty fast at cooking now. I also wake up early, everyday. Weekends included. There's no such thing as sleeping in.
Three weeks have passed since we stopped having a maid. Feel incredibly drained. LIke someone just squeezed all the light out of my system. Guess it's because I'm not used to this at all. Not used to doing housework for 23 years of my life and now, suddenly, when I'm beginning to get used to the toil of corporate life, I have to learn the toil of house-keeping as well. Social events, put a strain on already stretched resources. When I go out on a weekday, I come back and I'm ready to collapse. When I go out on weekends, I wake up extra early to clear the chores before running out the house. And still, I don't want to compromise my calendar. Life must have a meaning, an event to look forward to. I must do all this housework and earn all this money for a greater end, and what purpose if I spend my time working but not enjoying the 'end'. Still, wanting to have your cake and eat it too, is really beginning to wear me down. I feel old these days, and my back hurts, and I've got eyebags. The other day I could barely keep my eyelids apart while my boss was talking to me. That's right, I was falling asleep right in front of an instruction-giving superior. Nicely done.
Time. Time
I used to have lots of it. Used to wield it with ease, bend it around my little finger. Milk it for all it's worth, and still, at the end of the day, I have lots to spare, to fill my time with hobbies, people, events. I used to scoff at those with horrid time management. Who complain that they have no time. What no time? There is all the time in the world, it depends on how you use it. I used to do a million things, run a million things. School ccas, youth group, church rehearsal, socialise like crazy (weekends packed in advance, sometimes 2 to 3 weeks ahead). I still try to do these crazy things, meet friends, youth group, go out, hang out. Have a life. Have a purposeful life.
How does one make space even for that cobwebbed area. Then again, it was abandoned because there was no traffic to begin with. So your heart becomes a store room. Years later, you can't recall it's original function. And the clutter, seemed more useful and purposeful, than the concept of shelter. It is more crowded than it has ever been, although the paint still seeps through the cracks in the wallpaper. All it takes, is one tiny crack to remind you.
elsa | 10:48 PM
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