Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Home Training

My mom is pretty funny. Sure, I fight with her all of the time, but I love her. One of my favorite things about her is her ability to work idioms or little sayings she got from her mother into any conversation. If a little kid is in the store throwing a temper tantrum, she'll say, "You can tell he ain't had no home training (Grammatically incorrect even though she teaches English. Maybe we should pay teachers more?)" or if we go visit someone else's house, my mom will insist that my sister and I clean up after ourselves. "Act like you've had some training."

Well, mirror, mirror, on the wall, I'm my mother after all. Three months in my new apartment, I can tell that my roommates have no home training.

This apartment is never clean. And I'm not talking about my mother's clean, where you have to be able to see yourself in all surfaces, I'm talking normal clean. There are always dishes in the sink, there are always crumbs on the counter, there's always dirt on our floor (not technically anyone's fault since the rubber thing on our door does nothing to keep dirt out, but still, sweep that shit up,) and there's always dirty towels everywhere (technically my fault, but I'm not going to run the washer for one towel and I can't let the nasty towel stay in the sink as my roommates will continue to use it. Even when it smells bad. Seriously.)

It's not even just the cleaning, it's the food. When we first moved in, Hanna and Lexie went out and bought their own individual everything. Cassandra and I decided to share common things like condiments and baking ingredients. So we all have our own things, but sometimes I forget things. Like Cassandra doesn't like eggs, so she doesn't buy any. One time I happened to just grab eggs because I didn't know we were out, and they happened to belong to Hanna, and naturally she was upset with me for using her things without asking. Okay, I haven't used her eggs since. But I've bought two packages of Land O' Lakes unsalted butter (I'm a butter snob. It turns out margarine is made with some chemical substitute for milk. The more you know!) and they're both gone. I most definitely have not used 8 sticks of butter by myself, and Cassandra hates butter, so it had to be one of the people who has an (unopened) package of margarine just sitting alongside my butter.

I went to a funeral this weekend, and when I came home, my carton of heavy whipping cream was just sitting on the counter. Empty. And the remnants of whatever they used the whipping cream to make was just sitting innocuously in a bowl beside it. Like it's just cool that they used practically my entire carton of whipping cream to make frosting. Like they couldn't have purchased their own damn whipping cream or at least texted me to ask before they used my stuff. I wouldn't even be so upset that they used my whipping cream without asking if they hadn't used all of it. That's one of my pet peeves. Don't let me buy something with the intent to share and eat all of it. Leave me that last bit, and not a little bit either. A significant amount because I paid for it!

Anyway, I now know how my mother feels. I apologized to her. It is hella annoying to get up at 6:00 AM, go to school all day, then drive to work, then deal with kids asking the same three questions ("May I go to the bathroom," "What are we going to do today," and "May I help you?" The last one is almost cute until 20 different kids ask. Or just the same kid 20 different times.) Then drive home in rush hour traffic, open your door and prepare to relax and eat for the first time that day, and then realize you have to disinfect every surface in your kitchen just to make a meal, and then clean up after yourself only to have the same people who fucked it up in the first place come in behind you and fuck it up again. I am so sorry, Mommy.

I know it seems pretty hypocritical of me to insist that someone else clean up since my room looks like a tornado dashed through while playing tag with an earthquake, but the way I see it is, my room is my space. I can just close the door. I can clean when I feel like cleaning, if I feel like cleaning. But the kitchen/living room is a shared space with 3 other people, and out of common courtesy at the very least, I'd like for them to be able to use the stove without scraping egg off of it first.

And my room doesn't attract bugs. Seriously, sometimes I come in and see ants crawling around on the dirty dishes. Sometimes I kind of like to pretend that I'm a giant squishing people I hate, but most of the time it's just disgusting. I'm not even asking for the floors and windows to be cleaned, I really just want the kitchen to be spotless. It's how I was trained.

The moral of the story is, don't live with just anyone. They might be a nice person on the inside, but secretly waiting to leave dirty pots and pans on the stove because they've had no home training.


Did you think I was kidding?

Have a happy Tuesday!

No comments:

Post a Comment

 
Knit happens. - Free Blogger Templates, Free Wordpress Themes - by Templates para novo blogger HD TV Watch Shows Online. Unblock through myspace proxy unblock, Songs by Christian Guitar Chords