If you're the type of person who gets out of bed on Saturday morning, and your top priorities have nothing to do with a trip to the john and starting the coffeemaker, but instead of cleaning both of those, this blog entry is most certainly not for you. If cleaning for you is more of a "have to" and not a "get to", read on my friend.
Before we talk about my current stance on housecleaning, let me first take you on a short journey first through my childhood of the 70's and 80's and my twenty-something years in the 90's. I grew up with a chore list. Started when I was five, and every year, a chore was added. Now this was not stuff we got paid for or earned allowance for. This was a "you do this because you live here" type-deal. I dusted, vacuumed, cleaned bathrooms, washed floors, and a lot of other stuff that would leave some of you pampered children picturing a mini-me in a red curly wig singing "It's a Hard Knocks Life". Suffice it to say that by age 10, I could argue the use of Comet vs. Bon Ami with any housewife.
Moving along to my 20's. I got my first apartment in 1991, and I was all about keeping it spotless. Immaculate. Not a cobweb in the corner or dust bunny under the couch. My Saturday morning routine without fail was to clean my place from top to bottom, stem to stern. Whatever that means. I think it has something to do with boats. I grew up and live in Kansas, so the only experience I have as a boat captain is a part-time one as I'm driving it across the lake back to the dock, while holding the red Solo cup of the full-time captain we are boating with who has had to much to drink.
So from 1977-2002 (that's 25 years for those of you who get all confused counting years that span two centuries), I was all about getting behind a thorough cleaning of the house each and every week. Then in 2002, something happened that took that particular crazy train right off the rails. I became a mom. Nothing throws every routine you ever had completely out of whack like having a baby.
Oh, you used to clean the bathtub every day while you were in the shower? Yeah, well now you have 120 seconds to get in the shower and attempt to cleanse yourself before the baby takes the "Where's my mom?" whimper to a full-on "If someone doesn't pick me up RIGHT NOW, the neighbors are going to call Child Protective Services" scream. Aww, you used to have trouble going to sleep at night unless every dish in the sink was washed, dried and put away? Yeah, well now your husband has to pull your face out of your dinner plate because your sleep-deprived self passed out in it fifteen seconds after sitting down for the first time all day.
You get my drift. Babies change priorities. And that's a good thing. When I became a mom, I realized that I could not care less about dust bunnies and washing windows anymore. I would not trade one minute of time with my baby, then my baby and toddler, and now my kids, to spend the day cleaning every nook and cranny of my house.
Now, say you run a home daycare business like my friend Marty. Not keeping an immaculately clean house negatively impacts your business. And to clarify, CLEAN and ORGANIZED to me are not synonymous. I am all about an orderly house. I freely admit I am an anal-retentive OCD freak, just not about dust on the tops of the pictures hanging on the wall or people walking on the vacuum lines on the carpet. (Seriously, it's a thing for some people. What are you supposed to do, jump across the furniture to get around the room?) For me, keeping an immaculately clean house negatively impacts not my business, but my sanity, because I already have my hands full with the battle of "The Creep".
Everything in my house definitely has a designated place, and ideally, everything goes in said place. I said ideally. I live with three other people y'all, including Sandford and his son. Sandford is my Handsome Husband. Without my intervention, he and the Boy Child would maintain an existence that belongs in a homeless camp. Further details are not needed for you to effectively get the point.
Just believe me when I say it's an ongoing battle just to keep all their "stuff" (I would use a different word, but Jesus doesn't like it) from accumulating all over the house to the point where it looks like raccoons have taken up residence in our home. This would be the battle of "The Creep". Most of the moms reading this (and the 2% of the dads out there who care about such things) are nodding their heads right now because they too fight "The Creep" at their house.
With that ongoing struggle, who has the time or energy to CARE if the dining room light fixture is free of cobwebs, or heavens, when was the last time was I moved the fridge and cleaned behind it? But hey, I do have SOME standards for housekeeping. The laundry, vacuuming and de-toothpasting of the bathroom sinks get done on a weekly basis. Note that I did not say that ALL the laundry gets put away or that EVERY room in the house gets vacuumed every week. Just keepin' it real over here.
So if you come to my front door, you'd best check your judgy judgments about my housecleaning right there at it. Otherwise, I will hand you my cleaning supplies and tell you to go for it. Instead, I will be devoting my time to some other pursuit that, unlike house cleaning, doesn't leave me wondering one day and three family members later if I had done anything at all in the first place.
Sparkly Kisses,
D
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