Let’s face it: cleaning up around the house can be a major pain, especially since these chores typically eat into your precious free time (who wants to spend an hour during monotonous, sometimes back-breaking manual labour at the end of a long day? Not me). But, hey, that pile of laundry isn’t going to fold itself. Someone’s gotta do it.
That said, some household chores are worse than others. So here’s our ranking of boring, sometimes gross, housework, from worst to best.
Bathroom: Hands down, the worst household chore. Because no one ever looks forward to cleaning a toilet. And as if shining up the commode weren’t bad enough, there’s also your shower/bath which is gonna get covered in soap scum and random hair follicles no matter how hard you try to keep it clean. The only upside: when you’re done cleaning, you get first dibs on dirtying it up all over again.
Floors: Anything’s preferable to cleaning the loo, but floor duty isn’t much better. If you’re planning on doing a good job cleaning all the muck stuck to the ground, it’s at least a two-step process – sweeping/vacuuming followed by mopping (followed by a second round of sweeping/vacuuming to grab up all the stuff that was caked to the floor before you washed it). Adding to the misery, you’ve got to move all non-dirty items (like chairs, kids toys, etc.) off the floor, too, if you want to do a good job. There’s only one bright side: you get to yell at anyone who tries to step on the floor while it’s still drying.
Laundry: Another two-stage chore, but significantly better than floor duty because you’ve got some built-in downtime. Getting clothes into the washing machine is easy enough, and after that, you’ve got 40 minutes or so to chill. Then stick the load in the dryer and, voila, you’ve got another break. Of course, you’ll still have to fold the laundry, but that’s fairly easy work. And besides, you can do it while watching TV, so it’s not exactly slave labour.
Dishes: The gold standard of house chores. Dish washing requires virtually zero thought and the actions are so repetitive that you can basically put your mind in sleep mode. It can be a bit backbreaking standing in front of a sink for an hour at a time, but on the plus side you can watch TV (or, my preference, listen to the radio) while you’re doing it.
It doesn’t seem fair, but no one ever remembers the guy who cleaned the bathroom. They will, however, express their unmitigated appreciation when they see you did the dishes, ensuring they have clean plates and cutlery when its meal-time. Who knows, your housemates might be so thankful for the clean utensils that they’ll volunteer to do the bathrooms next time. That’s a win-win. For you, at least.
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