Cleaning house........

When I was a kid, we'd always ask my mom what she wanted for her birthday, or mother's day or any other gift-giving occasion. She'd almost always reply "A clean house!" I remember thinking, wow, moms are SO boring if all they want is a clean house! Not toys? Not new clothes? Not a nice dinner out?

Well, now that I'm grown up - and my kids are (or nearly) grown, I can vouch for the fact that a clean house is the BEST gift. There's nothing like walking into a house that is in order, who's surfaces are dust-free, who's floor is not strewn with dog-hair tumbleweeds, who's bathroom surfaces are free from spittle drops on the chrome, who's kitchen sink is empty instead of teetering with dishes, and who's carpets have fresh vacuum marks. Ahhhhh..........nirvana!

It takes a lot of work to get a house that way. I don't know about you, but I know people who vacuum every day! I know, right? Who the hell has time for that? Or people who clean their bathrooms on a schedule or (gasp!) employ a cleaning service! Not this mama. I've never paid anyone to clean my house, and while that sounds heavenly, it also sounds like a lot of work on my part to pick up and organize so someone who lives outside my home doesn't see the real chaos and filth we live in daily.

Ok, maybe not filth. I mean, we're not hoarders and there's no mouse poop on the surfaces or months' worth of dog hair collecting in the corners. But there are piles of papers, half-finished projects and dishes where they shouldn't be on the daily. It's a never-ending cycle and it's never easy to get anyone to willingly clean.

Today, though, I did ask my son to clean his room. He announced to his sister that I was "holding them hostage" until the cleaning was done. While not quite that dramatic, I appreciated that he did a passable job of cleaning (although he left the house with no sheets on his bed so that means he'll likely sleep on the floor in front of the fireplace for several more nights until he's forced to put clean sheets on the bed). He even helped me with "the high stuff" which was taking down the Valentine decorations from the ceiling. And he did it without complaining. Seriously, if there was a Hallmark card that read "Thank you for not being an asshole about cleaning up the house I let you live in for free" I'd totally buy that card for him.

And I've done the dishes and wiped down the counters and vacuumed the upstairs and tackled a pile of filing six months in the making. But the thing is? I REALLY hate cleaning. I almost hate it as much as cooking. Sure, I love the end results of both, but I figure I have four kids and a husband so why should I EVER have to run the vacuum or wash a dish? Still, I do it. Because, as the mom, I'm the only one who will pick up the wrapper that dropped on the floor days ago, or actually MOP a floor on my hands and knees (ok, like once a year, but STILL), or wipe out that little plastic tray that sits in the fridge under the water dispenser and grows pink with mold unless I clean it. Maybe I just notice it more?

But, ah, the days when the house is clean! This usually happens just before a party or event we're hosting at our house. Everything is vacuumed, dusted, bathrooms sparkle, and we light candles. And I look around and think "Wow, this is MY house!" And then I sit down with an adult beverage and soak it all in. Ok, not really, but that's how I envision it. Even better is when I come home and one of my darling children (ok, just Arlie) has done the dishes and picked up and I don't feel like I immediately have to fix something before I can sit down. That doesn't happen often, but when it does? Those are the best days!

And I make plenty of messes on my own. My office is a disaster. How I long for some type of organizational system that stays organized. But I just have so many PROJECTS I want to do, and I start them, and I run out of time or motivation and then things get pushed aside for more interesting pursuits. I'm not sure I could function in a perfectly clean and organized office. A bit of chaos seems to unleash the creative process for me.

People often say our home feels so "comfortable" - that you can "just be" in our house. I think what they're really saying is "You don't have any nice shit so we can't mess anything up." Because it's true. Sure, we have things we treasure, but our 15-year-old flattish carpet has had plenty of stains, our walls are full of pinholes because we hang decorations up for every holiday and event, and our furniture wasn't all that special or expensive even when it WAS new. It's good that people feel comfortable here. We don't bother to take off our shoes (anymore), and sometimes we go to bed and leave teriyaki containers on the coffee table which results in the dog eating styrofoam all morning. That actually happened this morning and the dog's stomach is making weird noises as I type this so who knows? There might be a pile of dog barf in my future. No worries, we have a carpet cleaner!

And I know I make things harder for myself. For example, when the kids have a pile of friends over and everyone is snuggling and watching movies and using every blanket in the house, I find it necessary to wash ALL the blankets, even though they'll probably repeat the process again the next night. I'll spend WAY too much time organizing the art cabinet even though no one really uses it anymore. And how do things get so messy anyway? Like those crumbs that collect in your silverware drawer? Seriously, how?

So, I'd rather do anything (like blog, scroll through Facebook, eat a bowl of Lucky Charms, pluck my chin hairs, fold laundry) than clean my house. I'm avoiding it right now, in fact. But my husband just texted me that he's going to be home in a couple of hours, so I'm going to do a super fast clean so it looks like I've been cleaning all day. My aunt once told me all she had to do was fold the blanket on the back of the sofa and her husband would remark that the house was nice and clean. I figure if most of the surfaces can be uncluttered and the wind doesn't blow dog-hair tufts down the hall when the door opens, it's all good. And no amount of vacuuming is going to bring the pile of my carpet back to its original fluffiness. The hardwoods don't shine like they used to.

But it's home. And I like it here.

Something to clean.......

This morning I thanked my husband profusely (there might have been tears) for cleaning our bathroom. It was long overdue and just yesterday morning I looked at it and thought "disgusting". If I were to use this bathroom in someone else's home, I'd be appalled. Yet, in my own home, I let it slide. Why? Anyway, great minds think alike (and apparently some of them actually put those thoughts into action) and my wonderful husband cleaned our bathroom last night (yes, he ruined another shirt with bleach but let's put petty things aside...). I was thrilled and wanted to express my gratitude so I gave him a big hug and a "thank you". He then replied "give me something to clean every day - if I do one thing each day, you know, leave it better than when I found it, then things will shape up around here." And, of course, my first thought was WTF? Am I not doing a good enough job keeping this house clean? (No!). But then I got over myself and suggested some things that desperately need a thorough cleaning. Among them, all three (yes, three!) refrigerators need a deep cleaning, the hardwood floors may contain deadly bacteria, and the pantry is stuffed full with various half-eaten packages of food products and an embarrassing amount of dog hair (the kids don't seem to remember the pantry floor when vacuuming). My husband just looked at me with a grimace and said, "yeah, that's not really what I was thinking" then proceeded to tell me he liked to "transform" things so they were obviously changed! Like cleaning our room. He went to town one day recently and "cleaned" our room, which really just meant rearranging and stowing my various crafts and hundreds of photos into other places. I will never find them now, which is probably just as well, because we all know I'm never going to scrapbook seventeen years' worth of my kids' photos.

His favorite "cleaning" project is the garage. Now, I have never understood men in that regard. My ex-husband used to busy himself cleaning the garage when we were planning for a party. Why? No one goes in the garage when you're hosting a party! Who wants to see your twenty Rubbermaid boxes of Christmas decorations? But for some reason, this is how he found himself "useful" and so I'd have a clean garage and be inside frantically wrestling children and trying to keep the dogs off the freshly mopped hardwoods. Go figure. Jeff enjoys cleaning the garage combined with a weight workout. He will do a rep of weights, then go around reorganizing our junk, then do another rep of weights. Never mind that there's a Pepsi can in the dog kennel amongst the many blankets they've chewed holes in and have now claimed as their own. That's been sitting in there for months, but the dozen or so softballs no one ever plays with are neatly tucked into their own little cubby.

I can't complain, though. Ninety percent of the time, he's the one cleaning up the really disgusting things like dog barf and poop. Just last night, he and the carpet cleaner became reacquainted at 4 a.m. when Shade decided to deposit the remnants of the last three days' worth of Christmas candy he's consumed (wrappers and all!) on our bedroom carpet. But we all had to pitch in with the pet indiscretion yesterday. For some reason, yesterday the pets decided the world was their toilet. I returned from yoga to find barf in the garage and office and poop in the family room and upstairs hallway. Everyone excpet Hannah ended up cleaning a portion of that. But she got hers - in the evening Georgette decided to drop a turd on the kitchen floor in the middle of a movie party. Nice. Hannah got that one.

Cleaning around here is never-ending and often feels like a futile effort. The only way things stay clean is when the kids are not here and lately there's ALWAYS a kid here. This week, for example, my kids were supposed to be with their dad all week. Arlie is in Spokane, so I was looking forward to a nice long week of a clean house, time to do projects, read my book, shop in peace, etc. But no. They've been here every day, having parties and creating a mess in their wake, not unlike Pig Pen's cloud of dust. And so we clean. And they mess it up. And they sometimes clean it up (although not without an eye roll or extended sigh), and the cycle continues.

So, while Jeff's "clean one thing a day" sounds like an ideal plan, it will never surmount the growing monster of clutter, trash and grime that follows a family of six. It's inescapable, and oftentimes feels like a preview for an episode of "Hoarders". But we keep cleaning and staying a half a step ahead of the chaos. And, by golly, my bathroom is clean right now so I'm going to thoroughly bask in the sparkling porcelain while I can because it might be weeks before I see the elusive gleam again.