“Two days ago, I decided to stop doing the dishes… at some point they are going to run out of spoons and cups and plates. Who will blink first? Not me.”
Photo: @MissPotkin on Twitter
How long would my family live in filth if I went on a cleaning strike? We’ve all wondered, and some of us have even made it an entire day living with the overwhelming discomfort of not picking up dirty dishes, stinky socks and other disgusting things—and the grave disappointment that no one stepped up. But one heroic mom, @misspotkin, went the full nine yards, sharing her journey in a now-viral Twitter thread.
The fed-up mom kicked off the thread with a photo of her kitchen counter covered in dirty dishes, bottles, pots and mugs. “Two days ago, I decided to stop doing the dishes. I make all the dinners and I am tired of having to do all the cleaning too. SINCE THEN this pile has appeared and at some point they are going to run out of spoons and cups and plates.”
Two days ago, I decided to stop doing the dishes. I make all the dinners and I am tired of having to do all the cleaning too. SINCE THEN this pile has appeared and at some point they are going to run out of spoons and cups and plates.
Who will blink first? Not me. pic.twitter.com/IZkOwP3a6B
— Miss Potkin (@MissPotkin) March 17, 2021
She followed it up with a challenge: “Who will blink first? Not me.” And so begins the saga, a hilarious Twitter play by play. Place your bets on how long it takes her partner, whom she refers to as Irish, to step up.
While day three looked promising, with Irish taking out the trash, he wasn’t prepared to tackle the kitchen yet, using a baby spoon and emergency mug to make his tea. Baby steps, indeed.
“There is a pan on the cooker with a single sausage in it,” she explains. “It’s been there for two days. I can’t look at it because it’s turned the colour of the man that washes up in Cast Away.” Yikes.
She also stopped doing laundry or replacing toilet paper rolls in the bathrooms, saying, “The last of the loo roll in the downstairs loo was used at 7:04pm last night. It hasn’t been replaced. The downstairs loo is now out of action for anyone that remembers. For anyone that doesn’t…god help them.”
*David Attenborough’s extremely excited voice* Here we have some uniform, fragments of a monitor arm and some school uniform, all bundled closely together in the corner of the spare room. It’s been there for 36 days, unmoving, biding its time, but for WHAT? The mysteries of man. pic.twitter.com/fXKLWNUSoo
— Miss Potkin (@MissPotkin) March 18, 2021
At some point Irish decides to start tackling the kitchen. Hallelujah! This is pretty satisfying, especially given that it’s taken multiple days to get to this point. Is anything more relatable and infuriating than scraping oatmeal or cereal off an old bowl?
Someone just discovered the joy of scraping rock hard old cereal off a bowl. Big day, BIG, huge. pic.twitter.com/gitNEI55xz
— Miss Potkin (@MissPotkin) March 18, 2021
MissPotkin sums it up nicely: “27 seconds of trying to scape that bowl, now multiply that by 6, and then multiply that by 7, then subtract the number of fucks I have left to give.”
A while later the kitchen appeared to be organized and cleaned… until further inspection. At this point we’re eye rolling very hard in solidarity.
pic.twitter.com/HRZH72qaGG
— Miss Potkin (@MissPotkin) March 18, 2021
As we all well know, no good Twitter deed goes unpunished, and this fed-up mom was obviously subject to some criticism for forcing her family to live in a dirty house (how dare she!?) and accusing her of “passive aggressiveness.” Luckily she’s not dissuaded and perfectly describes the way so many moms and parents feel when they spend the day doing the most thankless jobs for their families.
for me, the past two days have been funnier than anything else. I think we’re all entitled to run our own experiments, be amused, push a situation to its limit if we so choose. No one needs to be lectured by those that have failed to see the silly joy in what’s happening here.
— Miss Potkin (@MissPotkin) March 18, 2021
But there was plenty of support, too. “You have hit on a HUGE point here – the *noticing* is as big as the doing. It’s exhausting being the only person in a household to see soap scum, dog hair, old food” said Twitter user @ogbrenna. And some food for thought from @SunnyShade8: “My rule is I don’t cook in a dirty kitchen and no one sleeps with a dirty kitchen. After a few sessions of waking the kids and husband up at 1 am to clean the kitchen now it’s spotless before bedtime.”
But eventually, things start to get better and better in MissPotkin’s house. The toilet paper rolls are replaced—many, many rolls, which she hilariously likens to a Costco display. The dishwasher was actually turned on, rooms were tidied and surfaces were cleaned. THREE DAYS LATER.
“We keep our homes tidy because love,” she said of the hard work moms do. “We cook food and set tables and fill the air with scents of roses and fresh laundry because love. Love is patient but love is also fucking tired because she works 14 hour days. I know we are ALL tired but I am most tired. Me. I AM ALL THE TIRED.”
Hats off to you, exhausted mom! It was a rollercoaster but you came out the other side. We hope you get some rest and relaxation—and your family learned a valuable lesson.
At the end, she summarized the whole experiment really perfectly—and, of course, left us LOL-ing.
THAT IS NOT WORSE THAN ‘LIVE LAUGH LOVE’ but yeah, it’s close. I fucking hate myself.
