Doin' Laundry...

I find myself having to schedule myself to do certain things so I get them done. For example, wednesday night was for laundry, dishes, and listing some stuff on eBay. Yesterday was the day I skipped the gym and instead went to my credit union and made my bi-monthly trip to Trader Joe's to stock up on frozen Asian Marinated Chicken Breasts and Roast Vegetable Enchiladas. (I was planning on also getting a haircut, but decided to skip it since I had to work late because a coworker was out. The good thing about going prematurely bald in the front is that you don't have to worry about hair getting in your eyes if you skip a haircut...)

Sometimes I find doing chores depressing. After all, you spend a bunch of time doing dishes, and you feel good because you have a dish drainer full of clean dishes instead of a sink full of tomato-sauce-encrusted plates that are attracting fruit flies, and you feel good. Then you realize you haven't accomplished anything. You are back to where you were the last time you did dishes. You have clean dishes, but they are just going to get dirty again. You haven't created anything. It's the household chore equivilant of welfare - it doesn't create any wealth, it just moves it from one place to another. Laundry, taking out the trash, cleaning your room - same thing. I don't have time to create, to read and impart knowledge on myself, because I'm too busy making sure I have food, clothes that don't smell, and dishes to eat off of.

But as much as I whine about chores, I have the least excuse to whine in the history of man. After all, I may not have the free time to read as much as I would like to, but I still manage to fit working 6 days a week, going to the gym, taking two graduate-level classes, and running a (very) small ebay business into my life. And I still manage to eat pretty well and wear clothes that are clean, if rather wrinkled.

Why? Technology. When you think about this, it would have been hard for someone to do this 50 or 100 years ago, and not just because there was no eBay to sell on. I rely on technology like the washing machine and the microwave to get me through the day. I also rely on things like prepackaged food - thanks to consumer demand, I can now enjoy a fresh healthy salad by dumping out a bag of prewashed mixed salad instead of hacking up a head of lettuce. And because I am time-pressed and lazy, I eat the occasional salad, something I wouldn't do if I couldn't do it easily and fairly cheaply.

If you read a book about a guy who lived 75 or 100 years ago, who lived on his own and wasn't married, you will usually find out that he didn't live in an apartment - he rented a room, typically with someone (like a widow or a spinster) who took in borders. People who ran bording houses didn't just rent out a room, they also did things like provide meals and do laundry. Why? Because there was no way that someone would have time to work and cook and clean because cooking and cleaning were things that took hours to do, not minutes.

So I should probably start being more grateful that I have the ability to do all the things I do now, even if I long for the time to do more.

Plus, thanks to modern technology, I can wear my iPod Shuffle while I do laundry or wash dishes- which mkes it slightly more enjoyable....