Washing the dishes

Recently, after working my way through the recipes on my new favourite food blog, I realised something...

How I hate washing dishes! Given the choice I would much rather scrub the toilet or clean up dog sick. Weird...

It briefly occurred to me that I might be able to blame genetics when I discovered a cousin and an aunt who share the aversion. When the time comes, if somebody sweetly calls, "I'll wash up," we don't care if that person is a frail nonagenarian, we'll sneak off thinking, "Brilliant!" and pretend to find vital work elsewhere.

I'm sure all of us have certain cleaning chores we prefer to avoid. Eventually we have to do them though, and under duress, we perhaps hold our breath, tense our muscles and rush. If there are a lot of chores, or they take a long time, or it's actually going out to work that we hate, then we end up spending a lot of time being screwed up, don't we?

Distraction helps - I often tell my clients to listen to music.

It is quite challenging though. I'd still rather not wash up, but if I can't avoid it, I'm determined to not let it make me tense. I don't want to be defeated by my pots and pans. I want to ignore the greasy steam and the splashy muck and focus on staying light and comfortable. I want to take the opportunity to do a beautiful 'monkey' with lots of 'direction' and 'inhibition'.

Alexander Technique for those chores we love to hate...