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It’s 6:49 p.m. on a Sunday, and you’re sitting on your couch in sweats that really need to be thrown in with the laundry surrounded by tortilla chip crumbs and a little pyramid of beer cans you’ve built for yourself. You told everyone you had errands to run, chores to finish, and you had to “clean your apartment because you’d been putting it off.” But now you’re on episode fourteen of 30 Rock, and your place is no closer to being clean than it is to being rent controlled.
You get up, stretch muscles that are basically beginning to atrophy, and shuffle to the bathroom thinking, “I can at least get started” as you wince catching a smell of your hair that you ALSO need to clean. With a flick of a light, there she is: a bathroom your mother would be embarrassed by. The grout is dingy, the mirror speckled with Colgate cast off. There’s hair everywhere. Are you going bald? How is possible for one person to shed so damn much? You sort of spray Scrubbing Bubbles past your Ikea shower curtain; it does all the work right?
What are you going to wear to work tomorrow? You haven’t been keeping up on your laundry and there are socks and underwear everywhere as the basket you absent-mindedly picked out at Target is overflowing. Pretty sure your boss isn’t going to appreciate you showing up tomorrow in jorts and an old t-shirt from high-school speech and debate. Shit…you’re out of detergent. If you just overdo it on the fabric softener and add a touch of Dawn that’ll probably be fine. And think about how lavendery-soft your button down will be! No…you should just go buy detergent.
You wander back to the living room, spinning a bottle of Windex around your finger like it’s a gun and you’re in Tombstone. When was the last time you dusted? Okay, yeah…probably in 2001 when your mom handed you a can of Pledge and told you to get to it. But you live with one other girl, and she’s always at her boyfriend’s place these days – how many skin cells can you possibly be getting everywhere? You sort of wipe an edge of your Craigslisted entertainment center with the sleeve of the hoodie you’re wearing. Gross…maybe you’ll use one of the unmatched socks after you get some laundry going.
In the kitchen, it’s even worse. You’re not going to even toy with the idea of cleaning the fridge, HELL no. That shit is sticky, and you’re pretty sure there’s still a pitcher full of Skip And Go Naked’s from New Year’s hanging out in the back. You and the absentee rookie both have the same philosophy of “letting things soak,” so the sink is full beyond compare. Oh cool! The dishwasher is actually empty for a change! You stuff that sucker as full as you can and hit “Pots and Pans” aka: the only setting you know. Sweet, now you can tell Tricia it’s her turn next week when you guys run out of Anthropologie bowls to eat take out with.
The vacuum is staring at you. You really should suck up the tortilla crumbs and popcorn kernels that are surrounding the couch from your veg-out day. But you’ve already done the dishes, cleaned the shower, and used a sock with foxes on it to sort of clean the living room. So that’s good enough for today. It’s now 7:31 p.m., you plop back down on the couch opening another beer, clicking back to Liz Lemon and Alec Baldwin knowing you’ll just raid Tricia’s closet tomorrow for clothes since you don’t feel like actually doing your laundry. You’ve earned it since you cleaned, after all. .
Image via Shutterstock
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Kendra Syrdal
Once in college John Cusack asked Kendra to sing for him. She said no. Visit her website to ogle at her face and send hate mail // kendrasyrdal.com
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