Journey mercies

When living with the Korean family, I didn't have to do much house cleaning for a whole year because my landlord's wife did most of it. With two young kids, it was a difficult thing to demand I clean the house up when the kids made most of the mess.

Now that I've moved to a house with 6 other peers, house cleaning is a thorny issue. We spent more than an hour discussing the best way to go about with the house cleaning.

I was against having a cleaner come in - extra cost is one thing, but living as a Christian community I felt there would be great lessons for us to learn in doing our own cleaning rather than have other people clean after us. But, extra cost is a main thing as well.

Anyway, being the vocal person that I am when it comes to firm convictions I have - right or wrong;.I was glad most were voting against having a cleaner that I didn't need to actually impose my opinions (too much).

But I also dislike talking the talk but not walking my talk. So for the last 2 weeks I went on a cleaning craze. My family knows I'm not the neatest person around but seriously, ever since I moved to 52, I've been super duper hard working. I'm fussy about my kitchen in the first place, so that helps. My room's a perpetual mess, but I think because my mom always had a tight control over the state of the kitchen, it kind of rubbed off and now I'm a monster in the kitchen. I think I got too worked up over cleaning though because the moment I step into the kitchen now I'm scanning around to find what has not been done.

To the point that someone made a comment yesterday about not complaining over a matter I actually didn't even get bothered about. I guess I've been complaining a little too much in the last two weeks.

I worked up a new cleaning rota with some very firm comments in it. The one thing I'm determined to break is the habit of shrugging the shoulders and saying, "Not my problem."

The Korean kids have always irked me to no end whenever I ask them to help clean up and they whine, "But I didn't do it." And I always give them my do-you-want-a-good-thrashing specialty look in response. And it drives me mad when I hear adults saying that.

It's not important to me that the house isn't super clean. It is important to me that people stop deflecting responsibility and yet can be quick to complain and criticize others for not keeping things clean.

Now, if they can only get their act together and let me go back being my lazy self.