Mom vs. the Dot: Making it COUNT!

Sigh.  There they are again.  The dishes. Somehow, if I don't do the dishes for a few days, they pile up. Do you believe that? And if I have run out of paper plates, as I sometimes do, the dirty dishes are piled everywhere! In the sink, on the counters surrounding the sink, on the stove, all over the countertop and the kitchen table. Once we've run out of usable space in the kitchen, I know it's time. Now, I am not usually a person who procrastinates. But sometimes we are BUSY doing other things.  More enjoyable things.  Traveling, having a picnic, going to an amusement park, or enjoying the warm weather (because we know our good weather is limited). This week, my lupus kicked up and drained my battery down to almost nil.  That means I did even less in the housekeeping department than usual.  And so, this afternoon, when my energy returned, I did it.  I knuckled down and spent an hour and a half cleaning up the kitchen. Wh...

In college, I earned a little income working in the cafeteria's dishwashing room, affectionately labeled "The Dish Pit" by all who worked there.  Mountains of dirty, smelly dishes would trundle through on a conveyor belt while we rinsed, sorted, and placed them on trays to be industrially cleaned.  After my shift, I would smell like everything the cafeteria had served that day.  Eeew!  Shower time. Silly me - I thought I would escape the dish pit after college. Now I have a dishpit in my house!  Breakfast...lunch...dinner...snacks.  Every time we eat, more and more dishes pile up by the sink.  Every time I cook dinner, the pots, pans, and baking sheets are stacked higher and higher.  Sometimes I feel like I'm doing dishes all day long.  Every day of the week.  Every week of the year.  It's a never-ending, rarely rewarding job, but it must be done. It must, or we will all lose our ever-loving minds...and our soft, smoot...