Clean

My husband is a member of the local kollel for the summer, and he is now doing the usual brutal kollel schedule: he leaves at 7:45 am and doesn't get home until after 11. (That's 11 pm, in case you were thinking otherwise.) In theory there are breaks, but since he doesn't have a car the only one it is worth coming home for is the afternoon one. He gets home at around 2 and is home till about quarter to four, then he's gone again. Friday is a half day, and obviously Shabbos is off, but from Sunday through erev Shabbos we won't be seeing much of him for a while.

I miss having him around in the evenings, obviously, but the kids are actually seeing more of him than usual (since he usually gets home right before their bedtime) and in a way this schedule works out really well. It's really nice for me to have him home in the middle of the afternoon, so that I can have a break and get dinner started; he's eating with the kollel, so I don't feel like I have to make an adult meal every night (not that I always do, believe me); and, um, the house is kind of an awful lot tidier now.

It's not that he deliberately goes around messing the house; it truly is that he just doesn't notice the cloud of material chaos that he leaves in his wake. On Shabbos morning, being the sweet husband that he is, he tends to get up with the boys and let me sleep in a little. I like this very much and am not complaining at all; however, I can always follow the course of the morning and where they've been by the trail of discarded diapers and clothing, toys, food, dishes, etc. that wends its way through the apartment by the time I'm up. A small price to pay, but there's usually quite a lot of cleaning to do once Shabbos is out.

So, this week, being temporarily on my own in the evenings, there has been a lot of cleaning going on. A lot. This evening, I made good on a long-standing threat and cleaned out his closet, otherwise known as the Pit of Bottomless Chaos. I did find the bottom (and the crisp $20 bill that was wedged behind a lone plastic flip-flop); other bonuses included his old cell phone, a lot of tea bags, several pounds of scrap metal and enough recycling paper to save a small forest. I took out the garbage already, and set out the billion metal hangers for the scrap-collecting guys who pass by early in the mornings; the twenty is sitting on the kitchen counter for him, and the phone is charging.

As for the Dove chocolate I found in there... what chocolate? Finders keepers on that one.