Mopping up the remains of my mind.

Mopping seems to be the most futile of domestic chores. At least I feel like making dinner and washing the dishes serves some useful purpose, but mopping feels like it is truly a waste of my time. Washing toddler clothes feels somewhat pointless when they are just going to wear all 17 different outfits again tomorrow and somehow get tomato sauce on all of them (even though they didn't have tomato sauce at all that day), but at least that keeps the tomato sauce stains from growing into some sentient being and taking over the earth. Cleaning a toilet that is mostly used by boys feels futile, but then I remember that if it keeps our indoor plumbing from smelling like a long drop then it's never futile. Mopping just tips me over the edge.

I harp on some nights about how I love to cook, I just don't like to HAVE to cook so the drudgery of preparing 3 2 meals (I don't serve up breakfast, they get their own while I sleep... it really is as wonderful as it sounds) and snacks for my family of 6 every day can feel like it's futile and leaves me trapped in a never ending cycle of cooking and then cleaning the dishes just to dirty them again.

But mopping. Mopping. Mopping the floor is a genuine waste of my time. Sweeping I can see the point to, but mopping, unless there is a large spill or an obvious large sticky patch, makes me want to cry.  It's not that it's hard, it's just that it's pointless!

I mopped the whole house, for the first time in a LONG time (I have done here or there as needed often enough to not have the white tiles turn grey) the other day as I was stress cleaning while trying to decide if Lion had a broken arm or not (he didn't). Within an hour, there were at least 3 patches that a more mop-loving mother than I would have re-mopped. I just used the wet rag that one of the kids had wiped up a spill with to then wipe over the bits that "needed" mopping. And this is precisely WHY it's so futile. I live with 4 mess making creatures. If you see a tea towel, rag or old cloth nappy on our floor it is because it is our current "mop". The kids spill so much water just pouring drinks that there is always a wet cloth somewhere nearby so if something sticky is spilled then I just grab that, wipe it over, and that's the cue for it to go in the wash and we wait for the next water spill to find out what our next "mop" will look like.

All of that aside, the real kick to my mop bucket (I don't use a mop bucket, I have a microfibre mop and a steam mop) came the next day when the kids who had been refusing for days to weed the side yard suddenly decided that now, while I have shiny clean floors, on the muddiest day of the year, is the time to get in and do the job they've been asked to do... but to walk inside 2984757 times while they are doing it spreading wet mucky garden junk through the house every time they did.

I love those kids.

But I think I need to teach them to mop.

Just kidding... cleaning up after a kid who has mopped is probably worse than mopping myself in the first place!

What's a chore you feel serves no purpose?
Or one that you feel the returns are hardly worth the amount of effort required.