I'm wading through the dust bunnies and the piles of stuffed animals and jackets and assorted crap to tell you that housework might just mess with your health. Scientists even think so. They said exposure to cleaning sprays and air fresheners even just once a week could increase your risk of adult asthma. Which means you might want to leave an extra big tip for your cleaning person if you have one, because he or she is screwed.
And let me tell you why else housework is bad: Your clean house just makes some of us feel serious envy. I believe a clean house is a thing of beauty, my biggest wet dream. But with two working parents, we rarely achieve a level of hygiene that would get us past the local health inspector. There's often good intentions of picking up nightly and establishing some kind of routine, but more often we just get to it when the filth level makes one of us (me) fly into a rage, or if we are having guests over and want to maintain the fiction that we dust. When I go to someone's house and I see clean laundry still sitting in baskets, I think, "Whew, I'm not the only one." And when I enter a spotless house, I hang my head a little bit. I guess I should just be grateful I can still breathe.
