Supermarkets and Other Chores

In my opinion, the number one most annoying thing about life? Cleaning.
 
I used to love cleaning. I remember when I got my first apartment at 19, I’d get up early every Saturday morning to clean and scrub every inch! I’d feel ridiculously house-proud and like a proper “adult” for the first time in my life.
 
Nowadays however, it’s a completely different story. Cleaning feels like a completely pointless waste of energy. As soon as you clean something someone else in the house comes along and messes it up again—like, what’s the effing point?!
 
So, my husband and I decided to invest in a maid who can clean for us at the house we’re in right now.
 
Now, at first I’ll admit, I actually had a lot of problems accepting someone else cleaning our house, and I was worried about what she’d think of me as a young woman for not cleaning her own home. Would she think I was lazy?
 
I’d follow her around making excuses for why I couldn’t do my own chores in my own home and tell her endlessly about MS, whether she wanted to hear it or not. I didn’t care, it was just important to me that she knew I wasn’t lazy.
 
In my partnership, I want to feel responsible of the house to take charge of the chores and keep on top of the cleanliness of our home. Since I’ve been diagnosed with MS 6 years ago, I just can’t do the things I used to. It drives me nuts!
 
Another annoying adult thing is going to the supermarket. I love cooking and trying new ingredients and recipes, so I was always excited to go to the market.
 
All I can say for markets is thank god for trolleys—they give you something to lean on while you walk round, which can be a godsend. Although at the same time, they can be hard to push round corners, which doesn’t help with weakness; my husband normally helps me with corners.
 
They do this great thing at our supermarket where they ask you if you need help with packing your shopping at the checkout. The other day I said “yes please” for the first time ever because I was having quite an MS day, and the lady on the register helped me pack without a second thought. It was amazing, but at the same time, I felt I had to make her understand why a seemingly healthy 28 year old was asking for help packing her bags so again, I made sure she understood about MS-whether she wanted to know or not-and how exhausting it was to do grandmas shopping alongside ours.
 
Is there anything your market does that you find helpful?
 
One thing I did try once was getting our food shopping delivered, but wow, that was more annoying than anything I’ve ever done!
 
My fruits and veggies were already past it when they arrived, half the things I ordered were actually tiny compared to what I normally buy in store, and the delivery people didn’t have the things I actually needed so they either offered terrible unrelated substitutions or money off so I had to go out anyway to get what I needed! I had such high hopes for that service but at the moment, I’m so put off it.
 
After we go shopping, we often go to my grandma’s, and she always wants us to help her with her chores—which we absolutely don’t mind doing, she’s 91 after all. She is an extremely house-proud lady, so I can totally understand how frustrated she feels when she can’t clean as much as she once could. However, her house is 10 times cleaner than ours as she gets people that go around to clean it every other day!
 
I do miss my Saturday morning cleaning sessions though, when it was just me and my mop bucket and all the energy in the world. The other Saturday, I thought I had energy, so I got carried away cleaning the kitchen. I regretted it as soon as I finished, as I then fell asleep for about 2 hours after and didn’t feel right for the rest of the day. Oops!
 
What are your views on cleaning and shopping?
Have you found any energy saving hacks?