Housewives

This post goes out to all those housewives, past, present, and future.

I am living in a fully furnished and mostly-supplied apartment. It’s all tile, like the majority of homes here. No one has lived in this apartment yet—it was there for future people (myself, and a guy coming in a few months for much longer). So, I’ve set about to cleaning and organizing what I have.

Now things are all tile. I am still in the process (after catching this death plague) of sweeping and mopping the entire place. Meanwhile, my feet are brown with dust, even though I normally wear house slippers.

In the kitchen, I have a three foot counter space and a totally rigged table top for more counter space that is DEFINITELY not OSHA approved. I have several shelves. No dishwasher (that would be me). I do have a two burner natural gas stove that rocks my world.

Now that is picture has been painted, allow your mind to think of the amount of work this can be. I always have something to clean. Dishes are by hand.

Laundry, of course, is more or less the same, just minus the dryer. There are rooms for drying that have these really neat hanging systems. So laundry takes longer.

So my time has been spent cleaning, laundry, sorting, cooking, then cleaning—rinse, wash, repeat. This isn’t ALL my time, but sometimes I get on a roll.

At one point, I was juggling a load of laundry, dinner, and cleaning (as my dad says: clean as you go). It was then that I realized that this is all a lot of work! No wonder being a housewife is a full time job. Of course, I cannot imagine having a few kids running around, making messes, etc.

I’ve enjoyed the work. It’s been fun. Gives me time to think. However, I have earned a huge respect for housewives (or housePEOPLE. Let me be PC).

Cooking has been fun too. I got some meat at the market and one of the girls loaned me a George Forman, which REALLY makes life easy. I don’t have a rice maker, so I’m continuing to experiment with better ways to do it the old fashion way. I still think I need to increase the water ratio… Currently it’s coming out a bit hard, but fine for eating.

So rice, chicken, and a tomato or cucumber for dinner. Man it’s good.

On Sunday, we had a big team gathering at lunch. So we all chose a dish to bring. I wanted to contribute, and someone suggested mashed potatoes. So I used my three, borrowed three more, took a pot that someone left in my place when we were moving things, and proceed to make mashed potatoes. I only wish I had sour cream or plain (not sweetened. All plain is sweetened here) yogurt. Milk sufficed, but they could’ve been creamier.

I dedicated that pot of mashed potatoes to my wonderful parents, who for so many years forced—err graciously allowed me to help with holiday dinners. Without them, I would’ve been cooking blind (albeit with some intelligence. It’s not hard to make, seriously).

Which is a fancy way of saying they made me make the potatoes for Christmas last year.