All Caught Up

There was a status on Facebook from a blog I follow.  For fun, it asked the question one day of how many loads of laundry were waiting to be done.  The responses were along the line of “I am never caught up.  One day, I hope to get the laundry done.”  The majority of responses were from women and they were unhappy with their allotted load of laundry.  Think about it – the laundry will never, ever, be caught up.  If you start in the morning and washed every article of clothing, every dirty towel, and all the bed linens, when you go to bed at night, you will take off your outfit of the day, and ta da – dirty laundry!   Yes, your laundry marathon will give you a few days of rest, but before long, another load awaits.  There is only way to avoid going to bed without one item of dirty clothing.  If a person decided to achieve this, I pray they have lots of blinds, the blinds are closed and no unexpected company decided to drop by for the day.  What a show they would get …

I do a load or two of laundry a day and as long as everyone in the house has a clean outfit to wear, we are good.  If I open my underwear drawer and it is empty – I need to do some laundry.  And unlike my husband, I can’t turn mine inside out and get another day out of them – ew!  

Same thing for the house; you can clean like a mad woman all day.  But then the husband comes home with his dusty shoes and ta da – the floor is dirty.  Or the dog.  Or the kids.  You get the idea.  I will clean my house to perfection before company comes over, but within about ½ an hour of their arrival, the food is out, dishes are getting dirty, debris is tracked in on the floor, and some child has used the bathroom and not flushed the toilet.   

So where did this phrase/expression of “I need to get caught up” come from?  Our parents?  Their parents? 

I say we do away with the phrase.  It is not applicable to life at home.  I propose from now on we say something along the lines of:

• I need to wash a load of laundry so I have clean underwear for tomorrow
• The kids are washing the dishes.  After all, I cooked dinner
• Time for the house to be vacuumed – the youth group was here yesterday and well, you know how that is.
• The toilet is indicating it is time to cleaned.  How you ask?  It rang. (Me and my sense of humor here.  Hope you got it!)

What new phrases or expressions do you recommend?