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Last night I was finishing up the kitchen cleaning before bed, which mostly consists of doing the dishes. (My wife had already done most of the task, so emphasis on "finishing".) The dishwasher was full, with no way to fit anything else in, even if I had undertaken some aggressively Teris-style rearranging, so I was handwashing. And I imagine that happens on a regular basis to everyone, especially with the larger pots and pans. But in this particular case it was pots, pans, a bowl, some measuring cups, some drinking cups, a bit of Tupperware ... if not another full load for the dishwasher, at least a good start of one. And you may ask yourself why I didn't just leave it all in the sink, and in fact allow it all to be said good start on the next dishwasher load the following day. To which I would answer, that's what I'd been doing all week. Dinner last night hadn't been crazy elaborate, generating more dirty dishes than usual. We're just (and this is the minor revelation that prompted me to compose this post) constantly dirtying dishes these days. I wanted to record, for posterity, that one of the stand-out attributes of this whole coronavirus quarantine lockdown office closure school closure gauntlet we're running is the feeling that I'm constantly either folding laundry or doing dishes. All. The. Time.

First world problems, as always, I know, I know. And not all of it is directly attributable to the pandemic. The little guy is not so little anymore, he's 12+, a tween, growing and eating constantly like a teen. His younger siblings aren't that far behind. But on the other hand, they are at home every day eating lunch at the kitchen table and using plenty of plates and silverware to do it (the little girl especially has a fondness for Chicken and Stars soup). And I'm home too, no longer a growing pre- or mid-adolescent but certainly prone to stress-eating. I try to do as much of that off paper towels as possible, but there are always some contributions to the dish pile from my quarter. Meanwhile my wife is trying to be conscientious about packing lunch when she goes to work, and there's no excuse not to have plenty of groceries in the house, so that's the Tupperware in high usage.

Meanwhile, I've been (humblebrag alert) exercising more since I'm stuck at home, and I sweat like a pig at Bacon-Fest, so that's several extra outfits a week going into the laundry. My wife has been working at a barn in exchange for horse-riding lessons once or twice a week, so she also has dedicated outfits for that which require laundering after each use. The kids, as far as I can tell, just wear the same amount of clothing as pre-shutdown beforetimes ... oh except that the bino has recently started taking martial arts classes, so that's another uniform in the wash, too.

That's it, random observation about how spending way more time confined to the house leads to more housework. More deep insights coming soon!