How Not to Do Housework

I have a simple relationship with housework. I don’t like it and it doesn’t like me.

Take my floor, for instance. When I look at it (which I try not to do any more than necessary) I see clumps of cat hair, along with strands of my hair. These have come out as my hair has grown exponentially over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. If I leave it alone and let it do what it wants to do, my hair will soon be down to the middle of my back, like it was back in the 70s. Some of that is bound to end up on the floor, in the sink, and in the bathtub.

So what do I do about my messy floor? I could take a broom, a dustpan and a Swiffer sweeper and have all that hair cleaned up in about ten minutes of minimal effort. Do I do that? Of course not. Instead, I choose to ignore the clumps on the floor, even though I step on them with my bare feet whenever I walk around. Sometimes they stick on my feet, which is unpleasant, but not unpleasant enough for me to do something about it.

In order to effectively procrastinate regarding cleaning my floor, I must have a talk with my conscience. This goes something like this:

CONSCIENCE: Your floor is dirty. It looks like it has sprouted hair like King Kong, not to mention the dust that has settled on it.

ME: Yes, I know. I have to walk on it.

CONSCIENCE: So when are you going to clean it?

ME: Oh, I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow. Right now I don’t feel like it. I feel like playing on my computer instead.

CONSCIENCE: That hair isn’t going to sweep itself.

ME: I know, but when I’m playing on the computer I’m not looking at it. If I don’t look at it, I can imagine it’s not there.

CONSCIENCE: I give up.

ME: Thank you.

Eventually, even I get tired of stepping on clumps of hair on the floor. At that point, I dig out the broom, the dustpan and the Swiffer Sweeper and go at it, cussing in my mind the whole time and wondering if there is a way to force cat hair to remain on the cat and my hair to remain on my head.