Maxwell 9: Woks and spices - what's next?

[kpmom]

2 hours ago, Eternalbluepearl said:

 When I think of the Maxwell kidults still at home keeping themselves busy with projects like polishing the oak cabinets and making handmade cards, I am reminded of a period in history when upper class white women busied themselves with genteel hobbies like needle point or painting. Sort of like what I've seen in movies like Pride and Prejudice.

I think you are absolutely correct.

The problem is that it is very tough to have that life style here in 2017, unless the family is wealthy.  We've talked about how the Maxwell sisters could support themselves after Teri and Steve pass away and the sisters don't marry.

I'm hoping for their sake they each have a large nest egg.  The jobs they would qualify for would not be high paying.

[freejugar]

That last post was just a money grab, a post about the trip by john and jesse would have been much more interesting. Maybe they put their phones on airplane mode just so that teri wouldn't bother therm

[fundiefan]

When I was married we had a 22 cubic foot fridge in the kitchen and another one of a size I don't know in the garage. I was also married to a man who was not exactly a neat freak and he had no problem letting spills & splatters sit. 

I would clean both of them a couple of times a year, when I did my big spring / fall cleaning binges. 

And both of them together did not take me 3 hours to clean. Taking the damn thing apart, washing parts in the sink, cleaning the inside, putting it back together, cleaning the ketchup bottle that most certainly had a mess caked on it...for two damn refrigerators. 

The Maxwells, like many other fundies who try to make money off other fundies, make things far more difficult than they are or ever will be for effect.

If I spent 15 minutes a day cleaning my damn fridge for 12 straight days, I'd slit my damn wrists. 

[SPHASH]

I hope Stud and Forgotten did some clubbing in Denver and got laid.

[FloraKitty35]

I  cleaned my Mother's kitchen fridge yesterday (I still need to defrost the freezer and clean out the garage fridge.)  It took about an hour and that included wiping down the fridge and throwing the old or spoiled stuff out on the edge of a field 1/3 mile away on another part of her farm.  The idea of having to any that Maxwell style makes me want to double my dosage of Zoloft.

[CyborgKin]

What is wrong with the Maxwells that they can't eat a whole cookie or brownie?

On 18/06/2017 at 0:44 PM, LilMissMetaphor said:

Steve comes down in the night and counts the remaining cookies in the container, then grills everyone at 4 am Bible study over who ate the most recent cookie and why they didn't break it in quarters before selfishly having one all to him or herself.  "Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of cookies!" Steve lectures. Everyone writes it, dutifully, a hundred times in their notebooks.  Teri wonders, if she writes faster, can she sneak away to get in a quick 15 minutes of wiping down the pickle jar.

Ah, yes, that.

[FloraDoraDolly]

6 hours ago, SPHASH said:

I hope Stud and Forgotten did some clubbing in Denver and got laid.

John: Remember, Jess, whatever happens in Denver stays in Denver.

Jesse: Huh???

[ViolaSebastian]

If they don't want to eat cookies, why the heck are they making them?! 

This whole "problem" could be avoided by just, you know, not having them there in the first place.

[Foudeb]

I get the analogy, I really do, when you don't have a lot of time and there's plenty to be done you can just start on a task and keep harking at it until it's done. It works pretty well for tidying (who tidies their entire place in one go, it's so much easier to do it room by room). Or reading a technical and boring book, no point doing it all in one single day, it's easier to read it one chapter at a time so you can digest the content before moving on to the next chapter. But cleaning the fridge is one of those things that's easier to do all in one go - empty it, take the shelves out, clean the shelves, dry them, put everything back before it gets a chance to go off. How can you even do it over two weeks, do you empty one shelf out every day, clean the shelf, then wait for the next day to put it back in? It just makes no sense.

Just like you wouldn't clean your kitchen floor tile by tile, when the hard part of cleaning it is getting the bucket and mop out and waiting for it to dry afterwards. There's actually economies of scale in cleaning all the floors of your house in one single go and then going out for a bit while it dries, no sense whatsoever in doing that in 15-minute chunks.

And this is me being an evil female who leaves the house to earn money every day. Surely those professional homemakers would have sussed that out earlier?

With these people everything sounds dead and robotic. They have this one idea - schedules! - and then they just drone on and on about regardless of whether it actually makes sense or not. 

[nastyhobbitses]

I think that this 15 minutes of fridge cleaning for weeks thing is, like a lot of things in the Maxwell household, a conceit designed around Teri's clinical depression. That's how she had/has to do it because of her illness, and now everyone's doing it, no matter how inefficient it is when you're pretty much functional/not clinically depressed. It reminds me of those infomercials where everyone's acting like a bumbling idiot without Product X: Product X was actually designed for people with disabilities (for instance, the Snuggie was originally designed for wheelchair users for whom blankets can be impractical or even dangerous), and instead of showing viewers, "hey, if you use a wheelchair or have mobility issues, Product X can help you!", they try to make the product "necessary" for able-bodied people, who just look ridiculous when they try to justify needing this product.

[ViolaSebastian]

Huh. This is why I love FJ, I never knew the Snuggie had a legitimate purpose beyond making people look like dorks. 

[catlady]

Snuggie owner here. They're also useful in the car; they go over the seatbelt, and the Velcro at the neck keeps them from slipping off. I can't help but think that if they had better ads than what they did where the users act so stupid (afghans are hard? really?), it might not have turned into a joke product.  Incidentally, mine started out as a gag gift....

[MamaJunebug]

22 hours ago, catlady said:

Maybe Teri's three hour span includes asking for Steve's permission, praying for guidance, waiting for the Lord to lay it on her heart, adjusting The Schedule, planning the blog entry, getting Sarah scheduled to take pictures, praying for God not to let the dairy products spoil, writing the blog entry, then having Stevehova proof and approve the blog. 

Wow, were you looking thru their windows or what? This sounds about right!!!

[FloraDoraDolly]

8 hours ago, catlady said:

Snuggie owner here. They're also useful in the car; they go over the seatbelt, and the Velcro at the neck keeps them from slipping off. I can't help but think that if they had better ads than what they did where the users act so stupid (afghans are hard? really?), it might not have turned into a joke product.  Incidentally, mine started out as a gag gift....

My mom has one but rarely uses it because the fabric causes too much static electricity.

[fundiefan]

14 hours ago, Foudeb said:

And this is me being an evil female who leaves the house to earn money every day. Surely those professional homemakers would have sussed that out earlier?

I think that at least in part, that is exactly why they have not sussed it out - they have nothing else. Their entire lives revolve around very specific...everything. When cleaning the fridge isn't a large task that needs to be fit into an already busy schedule, it actually makes sense they'd drag it out. Why get it all done at once? What would they do then?

Women who work - because let's face it, it's a rare man who'd clean the fridge - have a much smaller time frame in which to accomplish domestic chores.So they get that shit done once they start since it's unlikely they'll be able to get back to it because everything else still needs to be done.

I'm in a2 bedroom apartment and about 6 weeks ago I did a major spring cleaning, which included having the carpets cleaned. I spent an entire weekend cleaning, getting rid of crap, organizing, sorting....all the stuff that gets put off and builds up. I got everything done except cleaning the windows & screens. My windows & screens are still dirty because since that weekend spree I haven't had another block of even a few hours to do them because, you know, life. I work 5 days a week and weekends are, as all employed people know, busy as summer starts to kick in. People who have lives and jobs don't have the fucking luxury of taking 12 days to clean their stupid refrigerator or polish cabinets or whatever the hell else Teri drags out to extremes. 

And, because the time frame for domestic chores is smaller, they are much more efficiently done.

Teri & her robot daughters are exactly what happens to a person when their life has no purpose, goal or intent beyond their bubble.

[onekidanddone]

21 hours ago, CyborgKin said:

What is wrong with the Maxwells that they can't eat a whole cookie or brownie?

Eating a whole cookie might be fun and fun is a waste of time and God would't like that so says Steve.

[Black Aliss]

21 hours ago, ViolaSebastian said:

If they don't want to eat cookies, why the heck are they making them?! 

This whole "problem" could be avoided by just, you know, not having them there in the first place.

Or count out 2 for each person in the house and then bless some other family with the remainder.

[LadyPriss]

I wonder what kind of system they have for telling time.  Do they put 'set iphone alarms' on the schedule in order to stay on the schedule?  Or do they have an intercom with a school bell?  Do they have a schedule accountability partner who double checks their alarms against the schedule to make sure it's error free?  Do they pray over their schedule even though everything on the schedule was already laid on their hearts?

We've seen what the girls and Terry use most of their time doing.  But what the heck does Steve do all day long?  

 

[bertnee]

Maybe they use the Unfuck Your Habitat app which has timers for doing chores 15 minutes at a time...OK just kidding, they'd never use anything with a swear in its name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Snarkangel Gabriel]

23 hours ago, fundiefan said:

I think that at least in part, that is exactly why they have not sussed it out - they have nothing else. Their entire lives revolve around very specific...everything.

I agree with this. I have always liked the saying " if you want something done ask a busy person" because I think it is true. And I know that I am much more productive when I am really busy at work!

[anjulibai]

11 hours ago, bertnee said:

Maybe they use the Unfuck Your Habitat app which has timers for doing chores 15 minutes at a time...OK just kidding, they'd never use anything with a swear in its name.

DH and I have used the Unfuck Your Habitat system before (not the app, the book and general system). They do suggest doing 20 minutes cleaning and then taking a 10 minute break. 

But the system doesn't really make an idol of cleaning, nor does it say to drag something out over several days/weeks. Do the 20/10 thing until it's done. 

It also doesn't advocate doing the amount of work that Teri does. In the comments of that post, she says she pulls a ton of stuff out of the fridge and cleans crevices, different parts, etc, to a pretty major degree. Unfuck Your Habitat just wants it to look okay. The Maxwells make an idol of cleanness. 

[SPHASH]

New post up.  Teri talks about meal planning and she even posted what they have eaten for dinner every night this month.  Shocker...burritos only once!

[MsSaylor]

Oh man im ashamed to say im going to go read this right now. Im legit interested in what they ate evey day. 

[MsSaylor]

Read it- now conmentary! Not too bad overall! Lots of soups and mexican style dishes which are pretty tasty and filling. Surprised by a complete lack of any pasta dishes. Also baked chicken would be a good option. A lot of it seems like stuff you would plan with young kids in the house but still all stuff i would/do eat. Im sad they had to eat hot dogs twice in 4 days but whatevs. 

 

Also weird whe needed a reminder to "use buns" with burgers and sloppy joes.

[Jana814]

I read her menu. It's stuff I would eat also. I'm almost 37 I'm not into fancy food at all. I get it from my father.