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[linnea]

See, it's not the vacuuming I hate; it's the noise.  The horrible, terrifying noise! 

I didn't vacuum my dorm room once last year for this very reason; luckily, I have a flokati rug that accumulates just about everything without ever looking dirty or filled with dust bunnies (because it is basically a big ol' rectangle of sheep hair and dust bunnies anyway).  But this year, I'll probably just wear ear plugs while vacuuming.

Alternatively, you can spend like $600 on a Miele vacuum like I have (why do I always try to spell it "vaccum"?). They are very quiet, although my cats still hate it just the same.

[KeithHernandez]

Wow, you have a $600 vacuum.  If I ever have a vacuum that expensive I will consider my life a complete failure.  (Not saying yours is or anything, just with my outlook on the world I would feel like a hypocrite or something).

[V-Adore]

I was reminded by Judy's driveway-sweeping of an outdoor chore that I used to hate the hell out of: picking apples up off the lawn. The first summer we lived in Nebraska, our house had these very picturesque apple trees in the backyard that would constantly dump a load of tiny, green, nasty-ass apples onto the lawn, and inevitably before every mowing they had to be picked up. Just as inevitably, by the time I would pick them up, quite a few would have rotted in the humidity, tiny land mines of disgust in the midst of drudgery. The smell! The wasps!

That September, not three months after we moved in, a freak snowstorm swept in and destroyed the apple trees. I think it was an act of God.

[wombat]

Does anyone else have this nasty habit of wallowing in regret? I hate myself for doing it.

Nope, too busy wallowing in terror that the rest of my life will be a failure. No time to dwell on the past.

The alternative to a quiet 600 dollar vacuum might be one that's so cheap it doesn't make much noise.  We have a cheap rechargable one that we use when I don't feel like dragging out the big one.  It doesn't clean as well but it's better than nothing, and the animals mostly just look at it funny instead of running away in panic.

[linnea]

Wow, you have a $600 vacuum.  If I ever have a vacuum that expensive I will consider my life a complete failure.  (Not saying yours is or anything, just with my outlook on the world I would feel like a hypocrite or something).

And while you live in your filthy hovel, I will be enjoying a living area that does not contain 6-year-old nacho crumbs. For a while I had the shitty $100 vacuums like you can purchase at Sears, but they always end up shitting out after about a year. You can either buy a shitty, loud vacuum every year, or you can shell out six notes for a decent vacuum that will last you 20 years. I guess it depends on your personal values and whether you think it's acceptable to share your place with vermin.

[kellichou]

If your cat has a crazy appetite but throws up everything it eats, it could have something serious wrong with it.  Make sure you've had it checked by a vet before you write it off as the usual sort of cat that just barfs as a hobby.

Yes, she's been checked by a vet for the throwing up.  She doesn't throw up everything she eats, just every few days (with no hairballs).  She was also checked for feline diabetes, which was negative.  So, according to our vet, she just likes to competitively eat. 

[slink]

People have made me hate going to the grocery store.

I wish I could do my shopping the way my brother manages to, which is to go to a small, good greengrocers for vegetables and herbs, a damned good (Scotland's best they reckon) butcher, an awesome little, friendly giraffemonger, and then to Valvona's, which is a fantastic Italian deli. Basically, you can get everything you want, better, from these little places than from the shitty supermarkets in the city.
Here, I have a farmer's market every few weeks which is alright, the garden centre which does carry a small range of better produce (and these awesome ready to bake, frozen croissants which taste so good!), and a couple of shitty, but not as bad as city centre supermarkets.
We really don't have the population to support small produce shops when we have three or four supermarkets. It's like those geography lessons come to life.

[Turbo Ninja]

I actively hate washing the dishes.  This condition has worsened in the last month because my girlfriend just moved in.

This means we have roughly 2x the dishes to wash (her old place had a dishwasher), plus she doesn't know how to properly prepare dirty dishes for handwashing.  She'll leave a tiny sip of milk in cups, which then turns into either a tough milk film or a moldy spot on the bottom of the cup.  She puts dishsoap on hot aluminum pans and she probably would've put cast iron into the soapy water had I not yelled an alert in time.  And while she was very good about pre-rinsing the dishes that went into her fancy automatic dishwasher, the plates or bowls she leaves in the sink are usually chunked up with dried rice or something. 

Her dishwashing is faster than mine, but it's also less thorough to the point that I'd rather make myself angry for an hour and do them myself instead of picking up a drinking glass and seeing something she missed at the bottom. 

We get along very well about almost everything, so it makes me doubly reluctant to confront her about her lackluster dish skills because I don't want our biggest fights to be about something so trivial.

[Doc]

I think the biggest fights are always over something trivial.

End of the day though she probably won't change her style so you're probably best just sucking it up and doing the dishes yourself.

[wombat]

I have two general rules about chores and relationships.  One is that if you can possibly solve the problem by throwing money at it (buying a dishwasher, hiring someone to clean), that is money well spent.  Two is that you are not allowed to complain about how someone else does the chore -- either do it yourself or shut up. Those are your only choices. If you don't like the way she washes dishes, do it yourself. If it's not important enough to you for you to do it yourself, it's definitely not important enough to argue about.  And probably she hates the way you vacuum or something, and she should do that herself.  And you'll probably end up each doing half the chores once you figure out who cares about what.

The situation is somewhat complicated if the other does something that makes your chore harder, like how she doesn't rinse things she puts in the sink.  We have the same problem at my house.  While I can sort of see the point, I really can't get all excited about rinsing something so perfectly that it practically doesn't need to be washed anymore.  So I make an effort but it's apparently never good enough. 

I think you have to meet halfway - she needs to promise to try to remember to rinse things at least half-assedly and you have to promise to shut up about it not being absolutely perfect. And you need to believe in each other's good intentions - as long as she's making an effort you have to believe that she is doing what you asked, as far as she can do it.

But if you really need the dish-rinsing to be perfect, then you go back to rule 2 above: YOU need to rinse her dishes after she puts them in the sink.  Because those are your only choices: Doing it yourself or shutting up.  Or, of course, living alone.

Sometimes the application of Rule 2 is amusing.  The Technical Staff actually writhes in misery when I load the dishwasher on the occasions that he doesn't want to do it.  It's SO hard for him not to say anything about my dishwasher-loading incompetence.  In my case the difficulty is usually the 'shut up and eat what's in front of you' application of the rule, when I haven't done the cooking.

[theinevitable]

wombat, I wish you were my mom.

But I guess the rule is different when applied to Kids.

[wombat]

Having no offspring I suppose I am not entirely qualified to speak on the matter.  Having been someone's offspring, though, I would say that there are at least limited situations where it's the same deal.  Like if you want the kid's room cleaner than he wants it, clean it yourself.

I think 'throw money at it' definitely doesn't apply, though.  I worked with a couple of zoo volunteer teenagers who appeared to have never used a broom.  They would have been better off if their parents hadn't had the housecleaner do everything, you know?  You do need to make sure your offspring acquire some skills before they leave the nest.

[theinevitable]

no, I mean, my mom constantly told me that I didn't do a good enough job doing the dishes.

but I didn't, really. No excuses here. I was just bad about noticing residual grease.

[wombat]

That is because your mom loves you and wants you to go out into the world with skills, see. That's why it's different.

[V-Adore]

More free college advice, Inev: be grateful your mom taught you, because as soon as you start group cooking in college, you will realize that everyone hates the dude who does not know how to do basic kitchen-care tasks. There were dorms at my college that actively lost their kitchen privileges because they were consistently leaving them so disgusting that Buildings & Grounds said "no more, you little shits." As soon as you develop a group of friends with whom you throw lots of parties or cook a lot (or maybe you've already observed this in college), there will quickly be three groups, with varying levels of resentment: "People Who Pull Their Weight," "People Who Mooch In a Basically Harmless Fashion," and "People Who Mooch and Fuck It Up." Be in the first group if possible, but whatever you do, do not slide into the third. Please do not be the guy who puts an inch of cooked-on charred nastiness into someone's mom's best cast-iron pot because he can't cook and then runs away because he can't clean either. Seriously. Don't be that guy.

(Another thing to avoid if you don't want to be that guy: fermenting your own mead in a friend's spare garbage can, then drinking it to fall-down out of a ram horn. But that's another story...)