There are certain things that I have grown to learn that my wife hates to do.  Dishes is one of them.  She will let them build up until there is literally a mountain of dishes equal to Everest in our sink.  And she’s a hypocrite too, especially if she’s tired.  She will yell at me for not loading dirty dishes into the dishwasher, but she will do the very same thing under the guise of “being sleepy.”  It’s like her Kryptonite.

In all fairness I was never much better.  Growing up my mother can attest to the fact that I would avoid doing the dishes at all costs.  I have no idea why, it’s so easy to do.  I think it stems from a couple things; 1. My mom wanted me to do it, which of course meant that I didn’t want to, 2. It’s so easy to be lazy about, and 3. It was kind of funny to see how mad my mom would get over something as silly as the dishes.

But I have found a happy place in doing dishes, a Zen about it.  I throw on some music and just take the ten minutes and get it done when I get home normally.  It helps in letting go some of the crappy day that I always bring home with me, not all of it normally, but some.  Plus it is a good excuse to listen to music too loud.  That’s right I party when doing the dishes, what of it?  But during my last little “raver” last night I discovered a couple things that I thought I would share.

We have certain drawers that Jesy just likes to pile stuff in for no rhyme or reason.  And it was one of these drawers that I took the time in cleaning out and re-organizing, because while Jesy might be the poster child of organzation at work, she is the exact opposite at home.  Clothes and shoes are strewn about randomly throughout the house , mail and various papers are littered all over the dining room and office and of course the dishes she so hates touching.  I call her the human tornado.  But I digress, after doing the arch-enemy dishes I realized this was a good oppertuniy to take care of one of the clutter drawers.

• We have a small army of spatulas.  Who the hell needs 18 spatulas?  Rachael Ray doesn’t need that many spatulas.  The entire cast of Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t need that many spatulas.  And how in the hell did we get that many?  Were the spatulas having sex and reproducing in the drawer?

• We don’t have a full set of measuring cups or measuring spoons.  We have two sets of each and neither is a full set.  Measuring cups and spoons must be the socks of the kitchen, they just seem to vanish into some Twilight Zonesque wormhole.  I’m nearly positive there is a parallel universe that has all the stuff we are missing.  I mean how else does that happen?  Maybe there is a turf war between the spatulas and the measuring utensils in the drawer and the measuring utensils are loosing?  But where are the “dead bodies” going?

• We have two things that look like it came out of Richard Greer’s bedroom.  I know one is a wine bottle topper, in case you lose the cork (so I would guess the other one is too) but when I saw the wooden one, I was worried.  Worried because I had no idea what it was or what it was used for and then worried that this was something that had no place in the kitchen near things that might go in my mouth.  I mean look at it and as a man tell me what you would think.

• I would also like to take a minute to thank Jimmy Baur.  A couple years ago you were attending a party at our house.  You had a little too much to drink and were upstairs pouring a Coke no doubt mixed with alcohol that you clearly didn’t need.  In doing so you dropped the Coke and syrupy goodness was spilled all over the counter and floor.  You never cleaned it up, I remember because I did.  What I never thought to check was the drawer that was right under where you spilled, the very same drawer I sought to re-organize last night.  There was years-old Coke that was now acting like a glue all in the drawer.  After several minutes of tendinitis educing scrubbing I got it clean.  Thanks again Jimmy.

Two hours later and after convincing Jesy to get rid of at least a third of the crap that we didn’t need or use, the drawer was put back together as God intended, in a neat and organized fashion.  The good news is that once something is organized Jesy has been a ton better about keeping it that way, she just would never take the initiative to actually organize in the first place, but I guess that’s why I’m here.

So my moral to all this is, if you live with a human tornado sometimes it is better to put your God-given gifts to use instead of fighting a losing battle all the time.  She hates dishes, I find some Zen in it.  She hates organizing, I like to organize.  She doesn’t always like the way I organize but tough shit. If it was really a concern of yours you would have re-organized years ago!

***Jesy’s Version***

I thought it was funny that George had let me know that he created a post about his organizing adventure last night because on the way to work this morning I was thinking that I was also going to write a post about his organizing too.  In his post above he mentions that once he re-organizes I do a pretty good job of keeping it organized and I do.  I absolutely LOVE when George gets the cleaning bug and goes to town on a drawer or cabinet in the kitchen.

This happens every once in a blue moon and sometimes it is a calm clean (last night) and sometimes it is a scary clean which are the ones that start by him not being able to find something in my mess. I understand why he gets all crazy about not finding something but I also don’t get why he just doesn’t ask me where something is “hiding” because I’m pretty sure I’ll know where it is to be found in my organized chaos.

Regarding those lovely spatulas, where are my cooking friends on this one? There are times that during a course of a recipe that I will go through 2-4 of those darn things. Its just easier to grab a new clean one out of the drawer rather than cleaning just one off 4 different times, who is with me on this? Either way, I allowed Mr. Herron to put about 4-5 spatulas in the Goodwill bag.

I will also agree with the husband that there were some interesting kitchen utensils or gadgets that I have NO clue what they do or what they were intended for. I was young when we got married and of course looked to my mom during the registry for advice because I really had no clue how to cook at the time. I’ll take this moment to add a little jab – I didn’t know how to cook because my mother never got me an Easy Bake Oven when I was little. Now that I’m cooking way more often than 3 times a year I’m using more kitchen gadgets and I’ve been purchasing some over the years depending on the recipe, however we still have some that don’t have any use so we went ahead and got rid of them too.

Sorry Mom – had to add the jab! Note to mothers that have young daughters, please buy them an Easy Bake Oven!