Domestic chores that beg to be ignored

Some days, when the dishes refuse to be washed, we don’t fight them. We just let them sit in the sink covered in their own smelly pieces of boiled cabbage or dried up tomato sauce until they can’t stand how sticky and stinky they are, then scrub them down until they scream for mercy.

I mean, you try to impress upon them (especially the cutlery) that cleanliness is much better than wasting away at the bottom of the sink until they disappear into a pile of rust, but knives and forks will be knives and forks.

I recognize it’s just a phase they’re going through; nothing really to scream and turn red about. In fact, some days they can’t wait for a quick rinse and a long skinny dip into the dishwasher, but it’s becoming rarer as each year passes. Even so, I’m confident everything will work out for the best because one day the dish will want to run away with the spoon, and they’ll want to look their best when they go hey diddle diddle into their own new life.

Making up the bed is an entirely different story.

Some weeks the bed is completely comfortable with not being made up at all. It lays there, slightly disheveled, but content and relaxed like a deflated air mattress pushed into the corner of a tent set up at a beautiful camping spot in the woods by the lake.

Sure, you can give it ultimatums and threaten to kick it off to Goodwill for somebody else to deal with, but does that really solve anything? Not really. So what if it prefers to wear a top sheet without a fitted sheet underneath. So what if some days it refuses to wear any sheets at all, choosing to drape itself in a down comforter even though it’s summer time? Does it really hurt anything? Are those little quirks going to keep the sun from shining? Of course not.

The only thing to do is just carry on and be thankful that man’s best friend is still his cup of coffee.

Do you have any doubt that coffee always looks forward to being made up, sometimes several times a day? I know I don’t. It sits patiently in its container waiting to be let out, exhibiting no signs of hubris, pretentiousness, or self-inflated ego, and then efficiently marches into its filter to let steamy hot water seep liquid goodness out of each and every grain. Afterwards, coffee is content with being thrown out, knowing that its mission is fully accomplished. Unlike the coffee mug.

The coffee mug demands to be the center of attention. It believes it’s special just because 1) it is generous enough to give coffee a place to sit for a while; and 2) it has a somewhat humorous saying plastered on its side that includes a picture of a goat. It gloats, and gloating is never attractive. But what can you do? You can’t drink coffee straight from the coffee maker.

ANSWER: We have more than 150 coffee mugs in our house. The chances of any one of them getting uppity is infinitesimal. But on the off chance one does, we know how to scrub out dried coffee stains until it screams for mercy. That’ll teach ‘em.