Do you have a least-favorite chore?

I like to cook, don’t mind doing laundry, and will even vacuum if I have to. But wow, do I ever hate dusting.

Why do I hate dusting? Well, it’s boring, and once I do it, the furniture only looks nice for a day or two and then dust starts collecting again.

Not that I don’t appreciate a freshly dusted and polished surface, because I do. I just don’t like getting it to that point and having it last only a brief time.

So I often procrastinate about dusting, and that’s bad enough, but I daily procrastinate about dusting when the surfaces around my home have collected clutter.

Perhaps one of us recently celebrated a birthday, so there are cards on the bookshelves, each one requiring that I move it before I can dust each shelf. Bleah! ( as Snoopy would say.)

Or maybe someone has been really busy lately and has allowed extra reading material to build up all over the end table next to her favorite chair (can’t imagine who that would be!) I figure, since the table is covered with stuff, the dust can’t get under it anyways, so why bother? But once the frustration of not having a place to set a coffee cup kicks in, dusting (after decluttering) the end table goes back on the to-do list.

You see, the decluttering part is what really drags out the whole process. When I make the effort to keep surfaces clear, I sometimes get an urge to quickly swipe a dust cloth over a surface. But when the surface is cluttered, the only urge I get is to pretend I don’t notice what a mess it has become.