The Rural Voice, 1980-11, Page 33GISELE IRELAND
Conserving
energy
--mostly mine
d
An article in last week's paper really attracted my attention. It
claimed a messy house was the sign of a dynamite sex life. The
house on that particular day looked like the Texas Cowboys had
been practising there so to justify myself I taped the article on
the fridge door. My husband was not impressed. He claimed the
house looked like it had been hit with dynamite. I rejoined that I
was conserving energy. . .mainly mine.
At this time of the year most women's fancy turns to thoughts
of dirty ceilings and walls and cleaning closets. Cleaning storage
areas is useless for me because I hate to throw anything out and
only rearrange the junk anyway. Every once in a while I'll come
across a few gems like letters written by my husband while we
were dating, and I can spend hours just going over the stuff I've
accumulated. I don't suffer from a guilt complex if I pull a book
out from under three months' mending and curl up and have a
good reading session.
I did have to clean all my books off the head of the bed the
other day when an avalanche of them came down hitting Brian on
the head while he was getting into bed. I always find one book
when I'm sorting through what,I want to read again and I'm set
for another couple of hours.
The sure way to get the house cleaned in super quick time is to
invite someone for dinner or, better yet, for a weekend. The n
you are motivated to do a thorough job in double time. 1 will
admit when you can hang Christmasdecorations from the
cobwebs, you haven't been inviting enough company.
Conserving energy in housework means alloting various jobs
to each member of the family. My youngest daughter put all the
dean laundry away for a week and all my underwear ended up
in the bathroom towel closet. Assigning the jobs and seeing them
completed are two different stories. Socks seem to give us the
most trouble. Either each person throws one away when they
yank them off at night or the washing machine eats one of every
pair that goes through it. The kids are pretty well the same sock
size and it's a free-for-all every morning to see who can get a
matching pair of socks first. I solved that problem by buying all
the same colour of socks. The girls kick a bit at such an
abundance of navy blue but they can match them up fast.
Some women seem to have methods of seeing that everything
is just where it should be and I envy them. It must be nice to find
your shorts from last year before November.
This winter, when it's snowing and blowing, I'm going to read
up on how to run a perfect house while conserving your energy.
Someone must have a fail safe method discovered by now.
CORRECTION
A story in Rural Voice last month on farmers who've
immigrated here from Europe used the name ofDavid Saldivar in
error. David is the young son of June and Ed Saldivar of Seaforth
and the family has lived in Canada for several generations. Rural
Voice apologizes for the error.