This is Quarantine: Day 67

As far as I'm concerned, there are two types of people in this world.

There are the people who clean as they cook, and then there are monsters.

I am a lucky lady of late. My devoted husband cleans up after dinner and does the dishes every night. I think I've mentioned it before, but one of the highlights of my day is wandering into the kitchen after the girls go to bed and not seeing another chore to take care of.

Having said that, I cook a lot. A lot. And while I know J enjoys the fruits of my labour, I see the look of defeat in his eyes (and also in the words coming out of his mouth - he's not the "suffer in silence" type...) when he can see that I've been cooking up a storm. The baking really does him in.

For that reason, and also because I'm not a monster, I try to help him out a bit. I almost always empty the dishwasher in the morning and fill it up throughout the day. On days when I dirty a lot of dishes at breakfast or lunch, I usually wash the dishes at some point. And whenever I cook, I clean as I go. It's mostly for my benefit - I get frazzled when it gets too messy. But also, I just can't leave things looking like a bomb went off for someone else to deal with. Especially when I can just tidy things up during the time that I'm waiting for this or that to mix or sauté or boil. Basically, I try to put away what I take out and leave him with a relatively organized stack of dishes to wash and room in the dishwasher.

I tend to assume that everyone thinks like me. But I'm curious. Do you do the cooking and not the cleaning? Or the cleaning, but not the cooking? If you cook, do you feel like it's courteous to tidy things up a bit as you go, or do you feel like you did the work of cooking so someone else should do the clean up? If you're the cleaner, do you have any expectations about the state of the kitchen when you get in there, or is it all fair game?

If you ask me, I can't imagine complaining about cleaning a baking sheet if I can do it with my mouth full of homemade cookies. But what do I know?