This weekend, I spent hours oiling the fronts of our wooden cabinets, sprucing up the inside doors and dusting the furniture, including all the nooks and crannies on the dressers.

No need for a pat on the back – the last time I did that type of deep cleaning was 2017.

Yes, two years ago.

I have a love/hate relationship with housework. I love how the house looks when I’m finished sweeping, mopping and straightening up.

I simply hate the process to get there, and I’ve rationalized my way out of almost every household chore.

Dust, in my mind, leaves a protective covering on the furniture. It protects furniture from sun damage, especially since I banished window drapes years ago. I told the boys it was because we all have allergies, but the reason was much more embarrassing.

One spring, I took down the drapes to wash them since they’d never been cleaned, and they were covered with dust.

I’m surprised the curtain rods didn’t break from the extra weight.

Then there’s vacuuming. The carpet looks great when I’m finished, but when I’m yanking and pulling that metal monster across the rugs, it’s a chore.

Plus I always vacuum up a Lego or piece of cardboard and I have to stop, empty out the canister and dig out the offending item. Later, I’ll notice that I forgot to vacuum behind the doors, and with a dog, the omission is obvious.

Sweeping and mopping are two thankless chores. As soon as I finish sweeping the floor, someone spills something. The grandkids love cereal, but quite a few Froot Loops get spilled on the way to the table.

Our dog is thrilled, but I not only have to sweep up whatever she missed but then I have to mop the floor because there’s dog slobber everywhere. I love to walk around barefoot, but I hate stepping in dog spit.

Over the Christmas break, we had our grandchildren here, and I kept a damp mop handy at all times. I mopped up Kool-Aid, orange juice, spilled milk and syrup every day.

There was one particularly stubborn sticky spot, and I had to get down on the floor to remove it.

That’s when I noticed the baseboards.

We’ve been in this house about six years, and I never thought about cleaning the baseboards. But apparently that’s where the dust starts to accumulate before inching its way to the top of the cabinets where the dust partners up with the grease in the air and becomes almost permanently attached to the tops of the doors and cabinets.

Climbing down from the ladder, I noticed the fingerprints and hand prints on the wall. I secretly congratulated my grandchildren for managing to get a dirty hand print on a wall that’s taller than they are.

They do better than I do because when I looked at the bathroom mirrors in the daylight, I noticed that the top third of all the mirrors had a layer of dust on them.

At 5 foot 2 inches, I can’t reach that high, and I’m too lazy to drag a step stool around the house just to clean a bathroom mirror nobody will notice is dusty unless they’re here on a bright, sunny day.

As strange as it seems, I don’t mind cleaning the bathrooms. Perhaps it’s because porcelain glistens and shines when it’s clean and the bathroom towels smell wonderful when they’re freshly laundered.

That makes it easy to overlook the commode that needs a target on the lid for the young grandsons.

But right now, the bathrooms and cabinet doors are gleaming, the floors are clean and the baseboards look like I just painted them. Sitting back with a glass of lemonade, I had to pat myself on the back for a job well done.

And then I saw the dog lick the kitchen floor.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.