211017 Sentinel, Domesticity

I have become a domestic.

Back in the Victorian times in this country many homes had domestic servants that did most of, if not all of the housework. At present, this household has just one domestic and that is me. I have, by necessity, become the chief cook, cleaner, laundry maid, dishwasher, sweeper and toilet attendant. One could say, I do it all. Now does this make me happy? It doesn’t matter one way or another because it is the way it is and there is no changing what it is. One advantage of living alone is there is no one supervising my work. I get to do what I do when I want to do it.

It appears that my life is coming full circle. I helped my mother with sweeping and laundry when I was a young boy. My early time in the navy I swept a lot of decks, swabbed a lot of decks, polished decks, cleaned trays in the galley, emptied garbage and was briefly a cook’s helper. Now once again I do all of that. I never liked doing those things before. I groused, complained and it all fell upon deaf ears. Now I do all of it with no one to complain to and the work fills out a portion of my long days. It is after 9 am now and I have been up for 6 hours already. My domestic cleaning work for today is caught up for the moment. My dear Joyce used to say cleaning takes a long time but is only good for a few minutes until someone walks across a cleaned floor, or uses a clean dish, or has a snack.