clean house

7 Things your Best Friends Lie to You About

July 10, 2014 By AmandaBeth

I love girlfriends. Without them I’d scowl more, spend more money on therapy, laugh only at Arrested Development, and likely have a drinking problem. My besties are all beautiful and funny and selfless and they all strangely pick up the phone when I call. But let’s be honest. Even amongst friends there are half-truths. Nice ways of saying things. Lying. For example:

(1) I so don’t care what your house looks like. Now this is a bald-faced lie, because they do care. They care because the more piles of dirty laundry, crumpled up receipts, and dirty frying pans the better it makes them feel about their own lives. To which I say: you’re welcome. At a minimum I owe them this, so I purposefully leave hairbrushes on the kitchen table as a token of my undying admiration.

(2) You’re not crazy. Because honey, sometimes you are. When you and a boy break up and yet you end up texting him multiple times in one night like “heeeeey” and “wanna meet up later?” and his response is that he’s watching a baseball game – no thanks – but you push onward not to be deterred until said boy says “you need to get over it” and you sob for hours and text him one teensy little text that may or may not be 500 characters wishing him a healthy future because he’s so kind and wonderful? That’s a tiny bit crazy, I’m not gonna lie.

(3) You look amazing. Not true. You are wearing yoga pants and you haven’t washed your hair since last Spring when your daughter was studying fractions and at this point you just don’t care about the external appearance of your body in public places which is why your friends lie to you and say you look amazing. You’ve gained five pounds and you need highlights. Let’s think rationally.

(4) Let’s grab dinner next week. What this really means is that I care about you more than simply offering lunch, because it’s not that fun dumping the kids and going to Subway, and you’re worth more than ham sandwiches, and yet it’s too much trouble to wait until the hubs gets home and change clothes and meet you someplace and pay thirty bucks for margaritas and then drive home to kids up past bedtime unbathed while the husband said “I thought you were going to be home at 10” and so they say this as a term of endearment which translates to “text me tomorrow, girlfriend.” It’s okay. Just agree and move onward.

(5) You are so funny! This is a common lie to cover up the underlying meaning, which is “your life is such a train wreck that it makes me cackle on the inside that I am, in fact, not you.” It’s not that you’re funny, it’s just that your life is a combination of awkward and unfortunate events that makes other people uncomfortable when you talk about them out loud so they translate that to some form of humor. But I take it as a compliment and invite them to grab dinner.

(6) Call anytime. This is a crowd favorite, because when your friends are trying to sit at a swim meet or navigate their way through Costco the last thing they want is for you to call and start telling them about your crazy complicated work situations or why your ex-husband is the way he is. Their response is usually full of mumbles and agreeable verbals nods followed by “I gotta run” and you’re left feeling like you dumped a load on the side of the road. But they answer the phone the next day to make you feel better, tell you you’re funny, and remind you that life will get better because you look amazing. How do they know. They’re on the phone.

(7) I am praying for you. This one is sweet, and I always say thank you, but in reality this means your friend throws three kids in a bath, reads The Tawny Scrawny Lion (again), hangs out with her hubs, watches two television shows, falls asleep without brushing her teeth, wakes up in a daze at 11:30, stumbles towards her bedroom, and on the way toward her toothbrush she thinks “Lord, help that poor girl because she can’t seem to catch a break” before falling into her mattress. But it counts. Cut them some slack. They pick up the phone for you at Costco for goodness sakes.

Then every once in a while, one of your really good friends will say “Snap out of it. You’re worth more than this (guy/job/heartache/stress) and you need to head to the gym and I don’t want to hear any more of your bellyaching and a woman shows stress through her stomach but what the frack ever and you need to be grateful for your life or I’m gonna drive over and slap you and you are really deeply loved by so many” and the universe is righted on it axis because truth reins supreme. So you invite her to dinner next week, say thanks for all those heartfelt prayers, and drive to her house to drop off a bottle of wine and a card. And if she’s home, even better, so you can sit at her bar and laugh like silly children. Because honestly, you really don’t care what her house looks like.

Liar.

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Confessions of a Messy Housekeeper

October 2, 2013 By AmandaBeth

I have always wanted to be a good housekeeper. I visit friends whose houses are clean and clutter-free and envy them, like a far-reaching star that I just admire. My pattern is typically this: a super-clean house for a day, then three days of “oh dear, I really need to get to that,” then a total nightmare where I don’t want neighbors stopping by for muffins. At that point I drop off my children at school, roll up my sleeves, and clean it like we all just might be licking icing off the travertine. We go in three-day cycles of sparkling and disaster around here, and when it gets too much I just call in the professionals. My lovely housekeeper, Esther, doesn’t speak much English and no matter how many jugs of Meyers cleaning spray I set on the counter I still get notes that say “buy more Tilex!!” and “pick up before, maybe?” I honestly don’t know why she even deals with me anymore.

My ex-husband was very neat. His sink never had toothpaste residue, his counters clean. He put his clothes in the hamper and rinsed out his dishes. It just never occurred to him that if you get something out of a certain place that it would be returned anywhere but there. That is really admirable, if you ask me. And when I stood there smiling and shining with a roast chicken and root vegetables on a platter in my hands, he would glance behind me and see the gravity of what was left behind. Pans and open containers and a stickiness abounding. But I made a homemade gravy! And there’s apple pie for dessert! It’s like I couldn’t ever really see it, or was too focused to pay attention, and when I feel the call to write or read or garden or make a care package for a friend on a random Wednesday, picking up the house was just not on my radar. This life is so short, and making beds seems like an incredible waste of time when there’s mantles to be arranged with pumpkins.

So I sigh and look around me now, piles of papers and cereal bowls in the sink. There is laundry to be done and things to be folded and I just wish for a moment that I put more of a priority on the business of housekeeping. That I made a few less banana muffins and a few more runs with a mop over the kitchen floor. The truth is that I don’t want to be this way. I wish there was a course at the local community college about how to maintain your house more efficiently, or put as much priority on laundry as one does on reading books, because I am a living example to my children, who see me singing and dancing and writing chalkboard sayings in the kitchen with seven pairs of shoes strung around the floor. And if there’s a dinner party to be had, I’m focused on the table décor without much thought given to the state of the countertops.

When I quit my job a while back, I tried to improve upon this. I did somewhat. I had more time during the day to load and wash and sterilize and scrub. But now that I’m looking to go back to work it’s going to be up to poor Esther again, sighing and telling me to buy more Tilex.

We are all born with certain talents. Some motivate and others encourage. Some are good listeners and others lead. And as women we have this feeling of worth that’s connected with an orderly home, as if we must succeed at this or we are failures in our God-given roles. Well I’m born with many talents, but keeping a perfect home isn’t one of them. I can barely get my kid’s t-shirts run through the wash, and we are often searching for keys and lost shoes. But what I have come to accept is that my worth is not tied to the state of my bathroom sink, although it does get gross and seriously, can I not just bust out a washcloth from time to time, or learn to put my make-up in a drawer?

So I’ve started to give my daughter simple chores, and we try to have clean races and sweeping parties, and I’m going to wake up every new day trying to be a better example to my children as a housekeeper. But I’m going to fail at times, and that’s okay. Because pretty soon I’m going downstairs to make that kitchen sparkle. Just as soon as I finish writing, editing, calling my bestie, and drinking coffee. Immediately after I read a few more chapters, pay some bills, check on how my carrots are coming up, and take a hot shower. Then, really. You’d be so proud. It will smell like Pine-Sol and Fall harvest up in here.

Deficiencies are just areas to improve upon with every day, the way I see it. They are not flaws that eat us alive. So loosen the grip on guilt at whatever you’re not perfect at, and realize that you make up for it in other ways. Then roll up your sleeves and get to work, whether it be practicing the violin or making beds or writing or cooking dinner, because there is always some bit of sparkle at the end of the rainbow. And that holds us over for a while — the constant struggle to improve, the glory of overcoming, and the feeling that you’ve put yourself back together, one dish and folded towel at a time.

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