Conventional Wisdom

There are many ideas out there that we know have been proven to be true, such as:

Eating less and exercising more will help you lose weight.

Flossing once a day is good for your gums.

Reading and/or watching television will not clean your house.

And yet, we often choose to ignore conventional wisdom, and go our own way, hoping against hope that reading will magically fold the clean clothes in a full hamper.  Where is a house elf when I need one?

I write this today because I love to read, watch television, and don't get me started on the timewasting I can do on the internet.  But my house is messy. I want a clean house, but apparently not enough to actually clean it.  And I spent yesterday morning NOT folding clothes, or clearing the dining room table or sorting mail, but reading a trashy book that I have read before!

Why?

I don't know.

Intellectually, I can say, "I have the year off, certainly I can get the daily chores done, plus some of the harder work, the sorting and cleaning that would really make me happier about my house."  And yet given a day when I am not going in to work to write, I laze it away and am surprised when it is 5 o'clock all of a sudden and I haven't done the dishes or started fixing dinner or even shopping for dinner ingredients and I jump out of my chair and wonder what I have accomplished.

I don't have a current solution for my embarassing problem, but the first step is admitting it.  So there.  I've admitted it to the blogosphere.  I'm hoping the solution will surface in the next book I read, television show I watch, or solitaire game I play.