Drawing lessons have had some unexpected results, one of them has been the realisation that in order to avoid my husbands head exploding, I must employ a cleaner.
I do not notice dust. I am oblivious to mess. Clutter surrounds me and I don’t see the tottering pile of books on the coffee table until I realise that I can only see half the television screen. Considering I only watch bits of the world news and masterchef at the moment, I am quite surprised I even noticed at all.
There is a spider web growing at an alarming rate in the corner of the kitchen and when I first spotted it, I spent quite some time observing the fact that daddy long legs build an inverted cone shaped web that is really quite pretty.
I do the barest minimum housework that it is possible to get away with. I don’t wash windows, I don’t dust or polish, now that I don’t have small children who like to eat their food off the floor I don’t mop, sweep or vacuum.
I admire tidy people enormously. There is something quite soothing about a lovely clean space free of cobwebs and dust. Tidy houses are very nice to visit but they also make me nervous and I worry that I am shedding dog hair from my skirt onto their tidy floors.
Also, I wonder where do the spiders live in a tidy house? I wonder, if the spiders aren’t happily occupied in a corner of a messy room, if they will leap out at you like eight legged ninjas and go for your throat from sheer frustration because you keep on wrecking their webs.
Now where was I going with this post? Oh yes that’s right distractions.
It was whilst I was researching myself for the written component of my drawing class,I found this quote in a book.
On the other hand if too absorbed in their special interests they can become careless or oblivious to more mundane concerns. Not uncommonly they rely on others to take care of these matters so they don’t even have to think about them. Thus although they live up to their responsibilities on the universal and sometimes on the social level, on the personal level they might quite regularly shirk their duties.
Reading that line was like one of those light bulb moments, except I resisted the urge to shout Eureka! I have long wondered at my total inability to create any sort of order around me and even when I try really, really hard to be neat and tidy, the clutter just explodes. It isn’t just because I am totally disinterested, lacking the housework gene, or even as my father would tell me, lazy and useless, it is simply because of the day I was born. Phew. Now that I have worked this out, I no longer feel guilty about my total lack of orderly skills and I can happily employ a cleaner to come up here and create some order for me. And believe you me I will not be one of those women who embarks upon a cleaning frenzy before the cleaner arrives.
I have spoken on this blog before about how the subtle tones and lines of the clouds will make me completely forget, that I was outside for any reason other than to gaze at the sky, and think about those lines and tones on a pot.
Ten weeks with Glen, my drawing teacher has messed with my head a bit. Now instead of seeing twenty tonal variations I am seeing thirty. I was already a tad obsessed with shadows and light lines and the infinite possibilities of blacks fading into greys. Now I am tottering on the brink of something and I don’t know where I am going.
Whether this need to see, to look deeper will rend the fabric of my marriage as I become increasingly frustrated with “The Spouses” grumpiness and depression. Along with his maddening inability to see that even when my hands are not covered in clay, I am still working dammit, and that the housework isn’t even on my radar. I remember once, years ago when I was drinking he came in and nagged me about the mess in the kitchen whilst I was cooking dinner. I swept all the dishes off the sink onto the floor yelling that that now we really had a proper fucking mess. I am much less tempestuous now that I don’t drink but the principle is still the same. It is all relative.
Then I remember that The Spouse is broken and in pain and I love the grumpy old bugger. I am supposed to be his carer, not he mine, so I put my selfishness aside and I do the dishes and clean up a bit, all the while dreaming about large floor pots and stacks of woodfired plates.
The gas man slash plumber comes up here on Thursday to connect up my gas kiln. Whilst he is here he is also going to hook up the hot water cylinder to the slow combustion stove. After living with a temporary kitchen for over twenty years I am finally going to have my wood burning oven. It is all a bit sad really, after waiting all these years for my oven, I have lost interest in cooking. Though I do have a good sourdough starter recipe I am wanting to make with the only apple from my tree this year. So we will have to wait and see if a working oven ignites my lost passion for cooking.
This is my temporary kitchen the photo was taken in the dark this morning. I am hard up against the slow combustion stove to take this photo
This photo was taken before I had my studio and I had set up a workspace in the space between the old kitchen and the new kitchen. I have put this photo in here to remind myself how frustrated I was when I didn’t have anywhere to work at all.
This is the new kitchen in the process of being built. I am leaning against the sink in the old kitchen so that you get an idea of the space. Once the sink is in and the water is hooked up I am going to get the cleaners in to dust the kitchen and living areas, which is a much bigger job than it sounds. They can also wash the windows and remove some of the older cobwebs. I will be pointing out the cobwebs that they are not allowed to touch, as the spiders in the corner of the rooms are not hurting anybody and have as much right to live in this house as anybody else.
I am glad that I titled this post “Now I am even more easily distracted” as the title gives you a clue as to the rambly nature of the writing. So thank you for listening, now I am going up to my lovely large studio to finish off some work I started on Monday.
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So is the stove near the backdoor now? Trying to get my bearings lol…..I must get up there soon for a milo….before the snow sets in LOL…..
The front door Meegs, I think you guys always came into the house from the shed side because that is the smoking half of the house. A Milo? lol.
Yes Milo..dont drink tea or coffee hahahaha
We had a combustion stove just like that in the house I grew up in. It also ran our hot water. No fire burning meant no hot water.
I’ve never had a roast as good as the ones my mother used to cook in that stove.
I had a wood stove when we lived at Liffey, I made bread every couple of days. When we moved back into the city I made bread as usual and tried to cook it in the electric oven, it was like a brick. heh. I have waited a long time for this stove 🙂
My Mum has tried to convince me that roasts taste the same when cooked in her new fancy oven she has in her house in town, but I will not be convinced! Although it probably has to do with the meat not being home grown nowadays too. I guess I will just have to be happy with the memories!
I’m with you on the not bothering with sweeping and dusting, and leaving piles of things around until they actively obstruct my view of things. I’ve always been naturally messy and spent a lot of my childhood hearing “why can’t you be neat like your sister?” and now that I’m an adult, somehow being expected to be tidy like somehow a switch should have been flipped on my 18th birthday, changing my innate messiness. Good to know I’m not the only one..
I am pleased as well. Hello fellow mess maker 🙂
I had a chuckle reading your blog! I am one of those who madly tidy’s stuff away and clean’s before the cleaner comes! I feel really bad if the house is messy and I will not let anyone come to visit unless the house (or what they see of it) is tidy and clean. We moved into a NO cupboard house over a year ago now and I am still trying to create suitable storage to put away the things we never use, but can’t toss out. I feel serene and calm when the house is clean and tidy and really stressed and agitated when its not! I do get distracted when I have to do housework and have learnt to set myself a goal per day rather than do it all at once (otherwise I really find it hard to do cos I don’t want to do it at all). Anyhow thank you for a great blog! Cathy
We built this house room by room from recycled materials on a non existent budget. I am very short on storage space add to this shortage the fact that I am a very eclectic collector as well as a bit of a hoarder and you have a recipe for chaos. I am also attracted to rusty bits of metal , interesting rocks and sticks and it isn’t uncommon to find a handful of feathers jammed into a crack in the bookshelf.
I am glad you enjoy my blog 🙂 thanks.
My friends used their ‘aga’ type stove the heat the water and their house. Your house is so cosy and I agree totally, I don’t notice dust either!!!
I will be interested to see how well the stove heats this half of the house. The wood heater in the old kitchen works well and we wont be taking it out until the combustion stove has proved itself capable of heating the living area. I am a bit concerned about the amount of hot water I will have just for the kitchen as the bathroom has an electric hot water cylinder, but I am sure we will work something out to use the excess hot water 🙂
Eighteen years of small children underfoot enforced the clean and tidy gene my mother instilled in me quite successfully (I still think my mother saw us girls as free domestic help). These days whilst being child-free I am slightly broken but . . . . I am also in possession of a retired-from-work husband who doesn’t like clutter etc and has taken over the housework – yay and twice, thrice yay! I occasionally swan about with a duster and cobweb brush (being somewhat bug phobic, insects of all types are unwelcome in my home). I do still clean the little bits he doesn’t do properly but only when he isn’t looking as he gets huffy by what he sees as criticism. It isn’t, it’s just me being fussy about doing a job properly, mother’s genetic imprint strikes again! This leaves me free to spend hours in my craft room messing about with papercrafts, assorted needlecrafts and my little internet world. Oh and I cook – always.
The only time I was ever really tidy was when the children were little. Jeff doesn’t like clutter either but he is managing to ignore the chaos at the moment.
I love your kitchen, both old and new parts, but I don’t see any cobwebs…..
I have a couple of spiderwebs that I just leave alone for the same reasons you do.
Although if I spot any redbacks they’re dispatched to the outside pretty damn quickly!
I was going to photograph the spiderweb in better light this weekend but when I came home from class today they were gone. #sigh.
Love slow combustion stoves and the food that comes out of those ovens is abso-bloody-delicious!
Hope you get your cooking mojo happening again, hot water jackets on those babies are fab and what spiderwebs???
I lost interest in cooking when I stopped drinking. I used to love being here on my own, cranking up the music, cracking a beer and cooking up a storm. I especially used to enjoy cooking for an event, like Christmas or Birthdays when I would cook for days in advance. I still cook, but I have lost that zing.
The Spouse, cleaned up some spiderwebs while I was out today. Hmmmph!
I think I have fallen in love with your studio…
Hurray, so when you come and visit I don’t have to worry about the dust and cobwebs that my mother points out to me when she (rarely) comes to visit.
If you removed the cobwebs, how on earth would I get to see British spiders? You need to explain to your Mum that the cobwebs and spiders are serving an educational as well as environmental purpose. Remind her that Gerald Durrell started out keeping insects in matchboxes in his pockets and that his mother was always a bit nervous on wash days. She should be grateful your spiders are out in the open. Also everyone knows that dust is a protective coating.
I’m more easily distracted than ever now too! And it’s probably not the best time for me, seeing as though exams begin in exactly 2 weeks! Yikes! :s
The stove looks very like the sort that warmed the radiators and water in a farm house I spent many a weekend at in Northern Ireland. That house was always cosy. I miss that time and place sometimes, but then, my Irish heritage really does tug at my heart. Oh dear, you’ve made me tear up!
I know that whenever you come to visit I won’t have to worry about the mess. The GOFA is a hoarder and I like my little mementoes. Every now and then I get ruthless and toss things out, but the mess is what makes it mine. (The GOFA and cocoa the Cracked Cat are what make it home!)
OMG. You are my friend Jojo. She has a spider that has been living in her cupboard for the last 2 years. Her whole house is kind of a zoo though, as the goats, pig, chickens and what not all have access. The other day she found a baby rabbit under her computer. Strangely, she does keep it mostly clean.
Anyway – rambly here too.
A clean house is the sign of a bored mind. Strange enough, your kitchen / dining are looks just like mine. What’s a few spiders?
OK, that was dining AREA. Not are. Me speak good englsh soom day.
Well I don’t think I make the serious mess in my house its everyone else that does! I have a cleaner once a week, she’s my goddaughter and its complicated so a lot of the time we talk and I have to pretend to OH she couldn’t come. I do crave order though but I am so not so my house is a cluttered untidy mess. I would in all honesty like some nicer stuff sometimes, like wooden floors as under our very old carpets is not wooden. But I have dreamt for so long that I would live in a house with a verhanda and so much more I think I live a lot in my dreams rather than the reality of my messy house. Your house looks so very welcoming. I am funny about change but this seems good change and who said it was women’s work to clean and clean and clean anyhow. A cleaner is a very very good idea. If they clean the windows it will let in light and you love light so I think you will like it that they may do that. My cleaner wants to tidy and clean stuff that I like the way it is and its taken ages to get her to understand that its my mess! Although obviously as I said earlier its not really. I would prefer to have her every day to do the stuff like washing as we have a lot of piles of that everywhere but thats the EDS side of it. Even if I didn’t have EDS I would have a messy house. My parents house is cream and very tidy and it freaks me out. You don’t. Am going byackwards through my reader again as not been up to interneting. I like the going backwards thing. Just about as much as I like your kitchen. xoxoxoxoxo
Have you seen that lovely book – A Perfectly Kept House Is The Sign of A Misspent Life? I love that book. Your wonderful kitchen looks like the kitchen of a creative busy person. Very homely.
Your Everhot is lovely. I can’ t wait to cook bread and a roast chook in my new oven and have hot water and radiators.