Friday, April 11, 2008

When multi-tasking goes wrong...

Did you ever find yourself wondering how you got there and what it all means? Not in a thoughtful, existential way, but more in a perplexed and confused way. I had that experience last night.

Chris was working late, the boys and I had been to martial arts and were rushing around trying to get chores done before bedtime, a typical Thursday night. Well, not typical because lately I have ten times more to do than I have time to do things. Thus, the multi-tasking. I started off gathering the trash because the pick-up is Friday mornings. The next thing I knew, I was standing in the kitchen, scrubbing the counters and wondering why the trash was yet ungathered. It took some thought, but I was finally able to retrace my steps. Here's how it went:

1. While pulling the trash bag out of the kitchen trash can, I saw some sippy cups that I'd thrown away because they were old an leaky. This caused me to remember that I'd seen a sippy cup in Timothy's bedroom. I thought I'd better go get it and make sure it wasn't leaky, and therefore, ready to go in the trash.

2. The sippy cup turned out to be ok, so I went to the sink to rinse it. While at the sink, I noticed a lot of gunk around the faucet. This, of course, needed to be cleaned with Clorox wipes. Which would then need to go in the trash, before it was taken out because I'm a strange little perfectionist. Off I went to the bathroom to search for the Clorox wipes.

3. In the bathroom, I was leaned under the sink looking for the wipes, and I noticed that the floor around the toilet was disturbingly disgusting. I have boys. So I decided to wipe that with the Clorox wipes while I was at it. Then, I took the wipes to the kitchen.

4. As I was wiping the faucet gunk, I noted that the counters were really awful and covered in crumbs. I realized it had been ages since I moved the bread box and canisters to scrub behind them.

So that is how, half an hour later, I found myself scrubbing counters when I had not yet gathered the trash. It's really no wonder that my children find me amusingly simpleminded! Just look how easy it is to distract me with some simple faucet gunk! In retrospect, I probably shouldn't share this story, since it gives a realistic view of my terrible housekeeping skills.

3 comments:

Moi said...

Man, I "clean" like this all the time. The good news for you is that at least you can map out and trace where you've been distracted, so perhaps there's hope for you yet.

Andrea said...

if you give a mouse a cookie

Bimbo Baggins said...

LOL, I am the same way! Something random happens and all the sudden I'm doing something completely different than what I sent out to do, but it still somehow makes sense to what I did intend to do!