A local woman crawled into bed last night, defeated and exhausted by nothing more than the thousand small indignities faced by any human being on the planet on any given day, when she was suddenly struck by the horrifying realization that she was going to have to get out of bed and do all of this shit again tomorrow. All of it.
The local woman closed her eyes, momentarily overwhelmed by the prospect of facing a task as simple as putting on a pair of shoes or feeding herself breakfast or listening to another human being just exist even one more goddamn time, much less the thought of doing it in and out, day after day, until she died.
“God,” she thought to herself, “and then I have to do the dishes, too,” and the prospect of a lifetime of dishes — even taken one day or even one meal at a time — was like the threat of murder to her heart. How could something as relatively simple as scrubbing soap over a handful of plates and cups and forks feel so spiritually defeating?
“They’ll just keep coming, the dishes,” she realized. “There will always be a dish to wash, every day of my life. And even if I don’t wash them that day, they’ll still be there. The house will get dirty, and then I’ll have to clean it. It will rain, and I’ll have to close the windows, and then it will get hot out, and I’ll have to open the windows, and I’m worried I’m sitting too much and that I’m alienated from nature in a profound and meaningful way but there’s nothing I can actually do about that because what am I going to do, move to…to ancient Carthaginia and become a farmer?”
“This isn’t an actual problem,” this woman tried to tell herself. “The fact that I have to…do things to exist, that isn’t an actual problem.”
“Which, oh God,” she realized, “means there’s no actual solution.”
As of press time, the woman was seized with the unshakeable realization that no matter when she fell asleep tonight, she’d still have to coax her stupid brain into shutting off and relaxing long enough to fall asleep again tomorrow.
[Image via The Dali]
Tags: dishes, local woman, the despair of infinitude, the sickness unto death
This is the most ‘me’ of any of these posts you’ve ever done, oh god. Every day I glare internally at myself and say “what do you mean you require to be fed AGAIN, I fed you yesterday”
my greatest dream is to become an autotroph
at the very least only a facultative heterotroph.
Wow, you managed to make the Dali painting even creepier. Thanks.
The struggle itself is enough to fill a misandrist’s heart. One must imagine Melis happy.
This is categorized as “Heroes.” I almost feel like I’m a hero now.
A hero would have probably gotten more done on their snow day than I have.
A snow day = do whatever you want day. You are presumably awake enough to be commenting so that is enough!
I want to say the “Heroes” tag is a play at the Kierkegaardian/Camus-ian concept of the tragic/absurd hero? I think? Sometimes I think I know what Mallory is getting at, and then frequently I am wrong.
You are a man; it is to be expected.
#GPOY
Also, moving to ancient Carthaginia to become a farmer, I’m in if we can have some kind of women’s collective/commune to go with it. Also goats. I want goats.
Yes, but then the goats will have to be fed, and the goats will have to be milked and and and
Goats like a strict schedule. Even worse than dishes!
DANG IT. Then the commune will need to outsource the actual working parts to any stray men in the area, whom we shall rule. I am of course assuming the commune will be run via misandry.
All right thinking communes are run vis misandry
It’s another fucking snow day around here, and something broke inside me. This is pretty much it. The dishes, always the fucking dishes.
Ennui *and* night terrors. It’s been a rough week
aka Depression 101
Yuss. This is an apropos post for the day when I have finally started taking an SSRI.
I might relate to this too much. Currently my apartment is full of dirty dishes that I can’t bring myself to deal with, but I’m clinging to the hope that they’ll become sentient a la Beauty and the Beast before I get home from work and just clean themselves. THIS COULD HAPPEN, YOU DON’T KNOW! Of course, if this does happen I imagine I’ll have to have inane conversations with a child teacup abomination all the time and I’m not totally sure if that’s better…
I’ll do your dishes! I actually find great relief in housework, only not when people are trying to talk to me when I’m doing said housework. Just trying to feel the simplicity of being over here!
There’s a dish on my actual bed right now from three days ago. I’m relating to this and to Allie Brosh “you need to put that dish away because you’re a menace”.
Pretty sure the solution to most of it is to have gobs and gobs of money, and make someone else do the dishes and the laundry and at least pick out your outfits so you only just have to put them on. I will also need someone to do my showering for me, since I mostly just can’t be bothered. (Also when I’m rich I will be able to afford more insulation / new windows / more heating and showering might be more pleasant. Perhaps I will hire someone lovely to scrub me.)
No lie: I have a theory that the difference in divorce rates based on wealth/education come down entirely to the ability to hire a house-cleaning service. Somebody get me a grant.
oh god oh god oh god
My sink is full of dishes right now and my face is unwashed from last night because it just..felt like a lot. UGH, LIFE. Always supposed to be washing something!
“always supposed to be washing something” is the most accurate and terrifying description of life i have ever heard. in this moment i am supposed to be washing either dishes or clothes but instead i am sitting at the computer hoping that my clothes + dishes will sort themselves out if i pretend they don’t exist for long enough
I’m hoping my cats might learn to either wash up or do my laundry. They insist on lounging around on my lap purring.
They will generally make an effort on the dishes. You may not want to let anyone know that that’s what happens though…
They dont do a good enough job of it that I don’t have to do it again though. Ungrateful little furry bastards.
TOO SOON
every day is too soon, though.
Well, that was a depressingly accurate description of my morning.
Do any of the toasties have a housekeeper? I want one and I have this weird shame guilt spiral about it, and I need more stories of women who live alone in tiny apartments and still cannot wash floors who said fuck it and went and hired someone else to be the doyenne of the estate. I work a fulltime job, have a rotation living arrangement with my beau (we trade nights at each other’s places) and try to be in my weekend art studio regularly and there are not enough hours in the year for my life dreams. It’s ok to just let someone else scrub the tub RIGHT? Also if you have a housekeeper does he do laundry? Tell me about it, tell me it’s awesome tell me how many times a week she comes over. Also is it more feminist if I hire a man or creepy?
Coming from someone without a housekeeper: I think that as long as you pay someone fairly and treat them like a human being instead of an appliance, it’s probably okay.
I know several couples and even one single guy in an apartment who hire housecleaners. Actually, more people do than I ever realized, I found out when I started looking into it. And here I thought I just sucked at cleaning more than all my friends.
I gave in and hired a cleaning service to come weekly just this month to do the bathrooms, floors and dusting. I have all the requisite guilts about it – Mom guilt, liberal guilt – but better I have the guilts than live my life fighting with my husband over who has mopped more.
The way I see it, you only live some measly, what, 80 years? If you’ve got the money, buying time with it is totally legit. I am having someone else scrub the tub because I’d rather spend my scarce free time with my kiddo — I think working on your art is just as noble a cause.
My husband does everything; that’s what they’re for
Seconding EPWordsnatcher’s excellent advice. It took us forever to suck it up and pay someone to come twice a month to help clean the place. We love her and she seems to love us (although I suspect she really just likes the baby). We both experienced a lot of guilt surrounding the decision because we both grew up poor and it seemed like a frivolous luxury. I can’t possibly describe how much better our lives are as a result. We canceled cable at roughly the same time as she started and I can’t think of a better trade (although the cable cancelation only pays for ~1.5 of her vists per month). People change their own oil, or don’t. They cook their own food, or don’t. They do their own taxes, or don’t.
My wife routinely works 80-100 hour weeks and my schedule is very lumpy. Add in a baby (now 16 months) and there are often long stretches where we simply don’t have the energy to do much more than feed and bathe ourselves. I feel like I suck at life but fuck me I find everything takes 2-3 times as long when wrangling a toddler, and there are some things I won’t do at all while watching him (e.g., ironing).
General rules of thumb about cleaning service:
(1) They don’t generally do laundry. Some will, however (this is true for lots of other tasks like plant care and windows). The best way to handle this is to ask in advance what they will or won’t do.
(2) They are there to clean, not tidy. Thus, you should go through your house and pick up stray laundry, papers and dishes before they arrive to make their lives easier. (Not that you or I or anyone reading this ever has any of those things lying around; I’m just saying I have this friend who has a problem with this.)
(3) As long as you’re paying them fairly and treating them with decency and respect, there’s no reason at all to feel guilty about paying someone to clean. I don’t know if you’ve seen a professional cleaner work, but they’re, like, 100 times faster and more efficient at their job than the average human being. When I had down time this summer, she still came to clean, but this helped free up time for me to re-do our back yard and balcony.
My mom has a housekeeper to clean all the floors and surfaces in the house, also the bathrooms for she is a Fabulous Confirmed Spinster and Cannot Be Bothered. Her housekeeper is actually a husband and wife team that come by twice a month for like $60 per visit. No laundry though. If the housekeeper provides that as well, it should be in their ad/listing/whatever.
You are providing income to someone who might not otherwise have an income, so no guilt for outsourcing a task you do not want/can’t do. Just also remember to tip decently, because service industry and I’m pretty sure most housekeepers and maid services are underpriced for the work they do.
To clarify, I have no guilt, liberal or otherwise, about paying someone to clean, like its demeaning to be a cleaner! No one needs to hold my hand on that score or tell me its okay to pay a fair wage for work. I worked as a hotel maid myself cleaning wedding guest barf so its not yuppie hand wringing variety guilt. , it’s the shame of a person who has been a professional cleaner being like, i give up. ” I don’t know if you’ve seen a professional cleaner work, but they’re, like, 100 times faster and more efficient at their job than the average human being.” I have been that more efficient faster person so it feels like a personal failing I can’t be fussed to do it at home. Also that my people are from a long a noble line of hard working poor people and if I pay someone to clean am I getting way too big for my britches?
Hahahaha, I forgot to mention I have that self-sufficiency guilt most of all. It fades with a clean bathtub!
No, how about: You know you can do this, but you don’t WANT to. That’s fine. Your ancestors probably would have taken the cleaner if they could have; what do we work hard for if not for the hope that our descendants will have it better than we do?
Fair enough. And what thebellewitch said. Not wanting to do something is a very good reason not to do something.
I have a wonderful cleaning lady who comes every two weeks and is pretty much 87% responsible for me getting through grad school without murdering someone or taking to the sea. I had the guilt thing for a while, but got over it with a quickness. I pay her $100 every time she comes, and she generally tidies/vacuums/scrubs things. One time she put together an IKEA bookshelf that I had been procrastinating about finishing! She’s magical.
I have so many thoughts about this because I am a renter and I live by myself and my apartment isn’t that big, so who do I think I am to have a house cleaner? Lock it up, Cockmonster. But truth is, it’s not getting done, which piles on guilt, and with all the other meaningful things in my life that I don’t have as much time as I’d like to do, I don’t need guilt about cleaning. So I think it might be time to break down and pay someone. Though I don’t know if the guilt of hiring someone or the guilt of just half-assing it myself will be worse.
I also think I may have to examine this guilt problem.
Totally with you on this. I even have a woman who lives in my building who has done catsitting for me who does cleaning for other people, and yet it feels like a personal failing to approach her (who is nice! who I know and have employed for other purposes!) to clean.
That said, small apartments are really hard to keep clean because there is no untrafficked space at all. Everything gets full use at all times.
I want one too! At my old apartment, the owner had been living there, and had a housekeeper come in weekly, and she left us the housekeeper’s number in case we wanted to continue, but we didn’t, so then I felt guilty about that. After four years, we had nearly worked up to hiring out the mopping and scrubbing at least, and then we went and bought a house that is too expensive, and also too large, and so would be too even more expensive to pay someone to clean…
Also I would have a lot of self-sufficiency guilt as I was raised by hippies – do your own cleaning, and also your own cooking always from scratch, don’t even buy shredded cheese, you can grate that yourself, do all your own repairs, plan your own vacations, do your own taxes… you can hire out hair cuts at least! I do buy semi-convenient food sometimes now. Maybe in another couple decades I can move up to hiring out housework. Though I have to say, the thing I hate most is laundry, and it seems like that is harder to pay someone to do… (I could take it to that wash-n-fold for $7 a pound, but that still wouldn’t solve the putting it away conundrum…) (It’s so lucky that my husband cares that the house isn’t a filthy cesspool. Sometimes he cleans something! It’s amazing. I am lazy. )
SEVEN DOLLARS A POUND? sheesh. my drop-off laundromat does it for 65 cents a pound. i always felt like they could be charging more, but i didn’t realize it got that expensive.
It is possibly that my pricing is not entirely accurate, on account of I have never availed myself of this luxury. Maybe it’s $7 a load? I don’t know. I feel like $7 is involved somehow…
I used to live in a flatshare and we had one. We were all young-ish and none of us were making that much money (I was a student at the time) aaand. It was so worth my £3.50 a week share. Totally eliminated the endless seething resentment about who last cleaned the bathroom/mopped the floors/etc/etc. A+++ would do again.
I live in China where it is extremely common for middle-class folk (Chinese and foreign) to have a housekeeper. Echoing what someone said downthread, it eases flatmate tension soooo much when you’re not being passive-aggressive about whose turn it is to clean the bathroom/kitchen etc. Our ayi comes three times a week, we pay her a good wage and she keeps everything shipshape. If you can afford to pay a fair wage, go for it. Life is short!
guys i’m here for you everyone come over and pile into my bed and we’ll all feel terrible together, BYO jammies and robes and no funny business
My city has some sort of pyjama bar crawl thing going on Saturday night, and I kinda want to go only because it would then be socially acceptable for me to run around in my leopard print onesie in public. But then I remember that it’s a college town, and it’ll be full of college kids and I am old, and ugh, just people in general, so long story short, I’m staying home and watching bad 90’s teen romcoms and maybe The Craft in my onesie and calling it good.
Every time you say this, I’m jotting it down in my Mallory’s promises journal. And I expect to collect on it someday SO THERE.
Be careful. I’m pretty sure as soon as you show up to collect on that promises journal, Mallory will summon, with her witch hands, all of the Spirit Animals you have ever named, and then you and Bob Costas’s Eye Infection will go on a terrible journey together.
submit it as a piece to the toast at the 1st year anniversary and then we show up in SF en masse
I’m with you in spirit (but can we have SOME funny business, say, in the form of doodling pirate faces onto Bill Keane’s “Family Circus”?).
Also, totally identifying with your article…Goddess almighty, give a gal a break, already.
I hear that if we become wizards we can fight entropy, but fighting entropy, even with wizardly powers, always seems to involve doing things. 🙁
oh god no now I’M thinking about it, not thinking about it is the only way i get through the days
NOT THINKING ABOUT IT IS KEY
Oh, look! The Void is here today! Let’s all just stare into it for a while… forever.
thank you Cecil
Gawd. Life is just one long Sisyphean task.
When I first started living on my own, I came to believe that my least favorite chores were loading and unloading the dishwasher and taking out the trash, but then I realized that I only hated them because they were necessary to avoid living in squalor and therefore the only chores I ever did.
Oh my god you guys, I have a list written of stuff I have to do today and it’s all so fucking cyclical. “wash laundry” JUST GOING TO HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN TOMORROW “clean counters” WHAT’S THE POINT “vacuum” WHY THE TODDLER WILL JUST COOKIE MONSTER MORE GRAHAM CRACKERS TOMORROW
“Cookie Monster” as a verb just killed me, because it is so perfect.
Am I the only one who hears Jack Nicholson’s voice reading this? Or have I just watched Witches of Eastwick a few too many times?
I never thought I would say this, but washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen has become a relaxing respite from child-wrangling. I put on stand-up comedy and go to it. I would rather clean the most disgusting refrigerator than fall into yet another soul-vortexing argument with my four-year-old and for the love of God stop talking so loud you’re waking the baby who just took 45 minutes to fall asleep. Now he’s slapping his Superman cape into the laptop. Gaaaaaaaaah. I might not make it through this snow day you guys. I might not ma
i would like to believe mallory writes these late at night, whenever she herself cannot sleep. they come with such frequency that i can only assume she is plagued by night terrors and demons, and the only way she can vanquish them is to write them away and project her frustrations onto somebody – anybody – else.
I’ve been internally wailing about THIS EXACT THING off and on for the past year (or, really, my whole life, but it’s only begun to sink in more recently). Damned INFP personality-type!
For days I’ve been thinking about this quote from the book I just finished, Mr. Fox, by Helen Oyeyemi: “I often think it would be such a luxury to go mad, and not have to worry about anything. Others would have to worry for me, about me. There would be some sort of doctor there to tell me: ‘Don’t worry, Mary, it’s just that you are mad. Now, be quiet and take this pill.’ And I would think, So that’s all it is, and I would be so glad. But aloud I would say, ‘What? I’m perfectly sane! You’re mad….’ Only mildly, though; just for show, really.”
I’m clicking through the Toast all at once, as I do every few days in a rush of desperation (“THERE IS NOTHING ON THE INTERNET TO DISTRACT ME FROM MYSELF! WHERE NOW DO I TURN?? OH RIGHT, THAT’S WHAT THE TOAST IS FOR”), and normally, since I’m behind the times, I don’t comment. But I had to say that a) this passage is eerily and wonderfully familiar, and b) thank you for happening to mention this book somewhere I might see it, because it sounds like One Of My Books and I wouldn’t have known about it otherwise. On the list it goes.
Oh, god.
This is definitely how I was feeling last week and the week before. Today I’m feeling more like every day now will be a day of doing the same things, but DIFFERENTLY because every time I do them I am a new person!
Still, if I think about the fact that I’m now expected to go to work every weekday for the rest of my adult life because That’s What Adults Do, You Must Be Dependable, Chloe I make sharp keening noises until someone distracts me.
SEVEN DOLLARS A POUND? sheesh. my drop-off laundromat does it for 65 cents a pound. i always felt like they could be charging more, but i didn't realize it got that expensive.
solution: be rich and then do nothing ever again
This is great! I often wonder why humans cling to life as they do! It’s not all that!
Peace,
This is great! I often wonder why humans cling to life as they do! It's not all that!
Peace,