A Cinderella Story

I feel like a cinderella today. I started cleaning the house the minute I woke up and ended cleaning at 10:45pm. It was a lot of work cleaning the whole place from vacumming to mopping to cleaning to scrubbing...

Gee! I am not even done yet. One more bathroom to go and I have not polished the furniture yet.

I was shocked. So much is involved just cleaning the house. I only had one dinner break. I skipped breakfast and lunch. I only ate dinner because I noticed I didn't have the energy to scrub the dirt off the floor at 6pm. It was quite a stubborn stain. I need food.

In preparation for today's cleaning, I bought a hundred buck's worth of chemicals and scrubs. So much money? I didn't know that either. I had no idea what those chemicals are for, just bought them for their fanciful names.

My favourite chemical after CIF is this thing called OUST. OUST is good for the bathroom, for getting rid of limescale. I spent at least two hours cleaning the sink, taps and chrome handles with OUST. OUST is great. Next, I took "Special Floor Stripper" and poured it all over the bathroom floor. heh heh, would love to see my bathroom floor 'stripped clean'. I lowered down and began scrubbing the floor. After five minutes, a strong odour started to fill the room. Eeeeuuuuu. It was ammonia. "Special Floor Stripper" contains ammonia. The whole bathroom reeked of ammonia and I could hardly breathe. COUGH! For a while, I thought I was going to die. I ran out of the bathroom and went to the living room, sank into the sofa defeated.

My dad turned around, took one look at me and said, "Tired huh? Tired, stop. Don't do already."

Tired? No way. How can cleaning be so hard? I went back into the bathroom to continue scrubbing. I won't be defeated by some chemicals with a cool name. Stripper or not!

Finally, I was done with the bathroom. I stood up and noticed my two knees had turned blue-black. I fell down the other day playing tennis and had some bruises on my knees. But they were not as distinct as the ones on my knees now. Were they from all the cleaning? How strange. One of them has got a 5-cm diameter. Wow!!! So ugly! I cannot wear short skirts for a long while. No wonder most housewives look very unglam.

I didn't think a housewife's day could be busy before. But not after today. All I did was just cleaning. A housewife has so many other responsibilites - wash the clothes, dry the clothes, iron the clothes, grocery shopping, cook, bring the kids to school, fetch the kids back, do homework with them, read the bible with them, play with them, answer their questions (kids love to ask questions), bring them out to play, plan nutritional meals for the family, go to the ministry of education to complain why they set such difficult PSLE math paper, financial planning, budget planning, organise family holidays, read widely to antipate changes so as to prepare the family, try to listen to husband while he grumbles about his work, ................that's a lot and more....WOWW

I could clock a 14-hour work-day easily as a housewife. I wonder how women cope with both a career and a family. Outsourcing? Outsource half the career or half the family?

As it is, I find it difficult to cope as a single. So much things to do in one day, so little time. Add kids and a husband. I wonder how I could cope.

Now, I know how Cinderella feels like cleaning the house the whole day - from dawn till dusk. I feel like her today, minus the sleazy prince. Or maybe that sleazy prince was just waiting for me to get poisoned by "Special Floor Stripper" so that he could spring out from his hiding place to kiss me while I passed out on the bathroom floor. Those sneaky princes only appear when the princesses are down with something - poisoned by an apple, cast under a sleeping spell....