A couple months ago I decided my house was disgusting and I made myself a weekly house-cleaning plan that covered all the chores I needed to do. So far, I have stuck with it to the letter with the exception of one chore: vacuuming the couch. It’s so damn hard to get all those particles of fuzz and fur off, and in one day it’s fur-covered again. Luckily, it’s a dark-colored couch, so you can’t really see the fur that well unless you’re up close (shifty eyes).
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Dusting. An exercise in futility, despite Endust and microfiber dusting clothes. All I do is move it around, and things are dusty again a day later.
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Washing the kitchen floor. The vinyl is off white, OLD, and filthy looking no matter what. I could get down on my knees with a scrubber pad and can of Ajax and scrub like a slave in olden days, and it won’t ever look ‘clean’.
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Scrubbing the bathtub, another antique, old fiberglass. I have to scrape dried soap and scum off with a defunct credit card because I’ve never found a miracle product that is in any way helpful.
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But I love to iron! Even in summer, I’m up there pressing my cotton and linen clothes, standing in front of a fan.
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Kitty litter box: It takes me less than two minutes, if that long. I have a remarkably clean cat with pristine eliminative habits. I open up a plastic grocery bag. Tip the box to one side, and scrape off lumps of wet litter off the bottom with the scoop. Sift through the litter for buried treasure. Dump in more litter if needed. Tie up bag, wash hands, done! Every day.
Fiberglass anything, but especially the shower floor and since we have ridiculously hard water, cleaning the glass shower surround is a treat, too.
I haaaaaaaate picking up sticks outside after a storm. I live in a heavily wooded area and if you let them accumulate they make the lawn look awful. It takes hours to do, and you are bent over the entire time.
I DESPISE all floor cleaning: sweeping, Swiffering, vacuuming, scrubbing, mopping, shaking out rugs. There’s so much shit to move if I want to do it right that I only do it right when I can get help from my husband. (He works long hours so when he’s available, we tend to do relationship-critical fun stuff instead.) Of the chores I do regularly, floors are the most frequently postponed or half-assed.
It doesn’t help that we bought an old home with mostly hideous flooring and have only managed to update one room in 2.5 years.
You disgust me.
Seriously, though, I actually second the question.
I hate cleaning shower and tub surrounds.
Next in line is the litter box.
Third most hated chore is washing dishes by hand.
I freaking HATE hand washing dishes. Oh, I hate it so. I’ve had to do it since I was like, 8, and I’ve done it enough by now to last me the rest of my life. I don’t even mind loading the dishwasher- I just remind myself to be grateful that at least i’m not washing them by hand.
Making the children do chores. Its a gazillion times easier just to do them myself and not worry about them anymore. I assign, organize, explain, demonstrate, supervise, plead, threaten, cajole, and then come down like a hammer. All for the end result of a half assed job.
My favorite tip for cleaning anything is to put on the ol’ blue tooth and call my very best friend and gossip until the chore is done. I am hardly aware of what I am doing.
Hands Down, The Shower. In order to get it really clean, you have to get in it, naked, and scrub. And I always run out of hot water before I’m done. Brrrr.
Next up would be the floors, cheap ass laminate in the dining room never looks clean, no matter what I do. Ugly off white tile in the kitchen also never looks clean. ugh.
I enjoy ironing though. I-pod on loud and singing along makes that not much of a chore at all.
Weeding the flower bed. There are many factors that make this the worst chore ever.
Last fall I had a landscaper take out about 75% of the flower bed, and I will try to be diligent about spraying the remaining bed area with Roundup. The weeds have made me so crazy that I would rather accidentally kill some of my plants with Roundup than have weeds living there.
Toilets. Not the actual toilet insides, those aren’t so bad. You get the little squidgy thingie, you swoop it around, flush, and done. YAY.
It’s the outsides and underneaths that I hate so much. It’s always a dust-magnet, and the bathroom gets all steamed up from the shower, so it’s all cruddy and nasty. For some reason, being on the floor right next to the toilet cleaning the dust off the floorboards behind it (and the little nooks and crannies ON the outside bottom of the toilet) seems so much more icky than cleaning the insides.
Second on the list is litter, simply because I can’t handle the smell of litter (fresh or dirty) being on ME afterwards, and washing my hands doesn’t get all the smell from the dust that gets released when I do it. So I have to do it right before I take a shower, and sometimes, I just want to take a shower and screw the litter.
Bringing in the sheaves. Ain’t nothing worth rejoicing about that bullshit.
The worst chore used to be doing the laundry. Gathering up all the dirty clothes, sorting them out, finding a bunch of quarters, finding the soap, carrying everything out to the car, driving to the laundromat, carrying everything inside, finding available machines, sitting around for an hour, bringing everything back home.
I’m much happier now that I once again have my own washer and drier.
Laundry. Because there are spiders down there and the stairs are really steep so I worry that I’ll fall down them someday.
I don’t mind laundry, and I enjoy washing dishes. Scrubbing the tub, mopping, all of that are find with me. Not great, but fine.
Raking is the worst fucking thing ever. Ever, ever, ever.
I have discovered that mulch mowing them is actually better, since they release nitrogen into your lawn. But, there’s never enough time to mow all of them, and in areas they are too thick to do that with. And then there’s flower beds and the like.
I hate hate hate raking.
Cleaning the shower. It’s a pain in the ass and I’m always sweaty and wet and gross afterward. My shower has gone so long without a cleaning that I’m pretty sure it’s a biohazard by now. I realize it needs to be done, but uuuuuuugh.
Any shower cleaning haters try the cleaning things that hang from the showerhead? I use one (well, it’s out of solution right now, but I usually use one) and it seems to work pretty well. You just hit the button when you’re done showering and it sprays stuff all around.
Do you have a link to one? I have no idea what you are referencing.
Of course, it could be that I just think it’s doing something. I know the toilet one worked, but they took it back off the market. It probably causes butt cancer or something, but I’d risk that for a toilet that was just that shiny.