My house is cleaner than dirt.........

At this very moment, in my house, things have reached a critical point. It's not just dirty. It's out of control. There are balls of hair rolling around the floor in the bathroom, visible dust on most surfaces, dog hair in the pantry (eww!), the kids' bathroom is a disaster (wait, that's normal), and the carpets....well, let's just say they have not seen the sucky side of a vacuum in over a week.

Recently, I had family visiting for my daughter's graduation. I envisioned a house cleaned like never before, sparkling and presentable, with nary a dust mite. Fat chance! Instead, we were scrambling to put clean sheets on beds and the best contribution I made to the whole affair was buying new towels. The house, while vacuumed, dusted and straightened before the arrival of guests, deteriorated in the alarmingly rapid way that only a house with four kids and three dogs can, and all was for naught just hours after my family descended.

For one thing, my kids have NO concept of making guests comfortable by perhaps altering their routine of slovenliness for a few days. Like, perhaps, they could have refrained from leaving dirty underwear on the floor of the bathroom being shared by guests, or thrown away the wrapper/box/paper/container that their various food products came in instead of leaving them on the counter/next to the computer/table. Also, chores seem to fly out the window when guests arrive and the kids enjoy using "visiting" as an excuse to pretend they are in a hotel and I'm their personal maid.

Then, there were the meals. I envisioned a lovely meal each night of our guests' stay. My husband, being an excellent chef, would prepare meals that would astound and we would all gather around our large dining room table and enjoy sumptuous feasts every night. Instead, we found ourselves eating Burgermaster while standing in line for graduation, and me tossing a box of donuts on the counter for breakfast before dashing off to work.

We spend hours cleaning the house and it's undone in minutes. It's hardly worth the effort. Which could explain the current state of our humble dwelling. The funny thing is, if I were a guest in this house (or this was someone else's house), I'd be appalled at the housecleaning efforts. Pink rings in toilets, piles of random papers, a lollipop wrapper stuck to the kitchen floor for two days (that one astounds me - I could have picked it up yesterday, but I thought I'd experiment. Each time I conduct this experiment, the results are the same: I am the only one capable of picking it up!). I'd be grossed out if I had to live in this house. Oh wait, I DO live in this house.

So, today it's rainy and crappy out and there's really nothing better to do than clean this pigsty up. And I'll do it with a hefty dose of resentment, muttering under my breath about WHY can't they just pick up after themselves and WHY doesn't anyone ever follow the rules about not eating in the family room, and WHY is there SO MUCH CRAP? And I'll toss a bunch of stuff and fill a bunch of bags with donations and at some point I'll get distracted by a pile or a mound or a disorganized drawer/shelf/area and I'll spend hours organizing it so it can be undone in minutes. THIS, my friend, is the drudgery of life.

Or maybe I'll just stay here in bed on my laptop, drinking Starbucks and eating a scone........because, really, what's one more day of dust?

Random musings............

Heard outside my window just now: "And the body was decomposing.........". Hmmm....not what you'd expect to year when your 10 year old is playing outside. Except that said 10 year old is totally obsessed with "24" which is a completely inappropriate show for someone his age, but tell that to his dad.

Why am I the only one who picks up candy wrappers off the floor or pulls the rug straight after the dogs mess it up running into the house like the crazed maniacs they are? I have actually conducted some (not scientific) experiments. Rug askew? Two full days before I straightened it. Candy wrapper on floor? Four days till I picked it up. Someone (Jeff) put an empty garbage bag box on the floor, supposedly to take out to the recycle bin. But no, I tripped over it twice and stubbed my toe on it once before walking it out to the recycle bin. Earlier, I told the kids to make the dogs shut up. This involved yelling only (not the actual use of any limbs). Harrison said "I'm busy" Seriously? No wonder I'm so tired.

Hayley just popped her head in my room and said "do you happen to have a spare copy of 'A Tale of Two Cities' laying around in here?" I mean, to her credit, I WAS an English major, but really? It's not like I keep classics "just in case". Then she said she needed it tomorrow. Hmmm....not my problem. I already did tenth grade.

Shade barks his stupid head off constantly, even on a nice day when it's sunny. Jeff yells at him and says he is going to kill him but he never does. Promises, promises.

Jeff doesn't even know what grade his kid is in. Men are so lame like that!

Ok, that's all for now.

Thoughts on Thursday

I AM SICK OF THIS RAIN!!!! It's ridiculous. Yesterday it snowed all day. Just that "substantial rain" type of snow, that's white and thicker than rain and sticks but melts faster than it can accumulate. It blows sideways. The day before that, when we were enjoying some more sideways rain, the wind blew so hard for about an hour that when I arrived home, my entire deck and side of house was covered with fallen branches and the kids made a fort out of the 20-30 foot long branches they found on the playground (geesh, if they had been out there? Who knew our playground was deadly!) I can't even imagine what my roof looks like and this morning Harrison said our gutters were overflowing. It's April now. March was supposed to go out like a lamb. Well, it didn't.

In other news, this morning when I was rinsing dishes to stack in the left side of the sink (WHEN will they learn - rinse and move to the left, rinse and move to the left), I found a pencil floating among the apple peels and plates with hardened cheese on them. A pencil? What the hell? And it just reminded me of how lazy we can all be. Case in point - this morning when I arrived downstairs at an ungodly hour to prepare lunches for four children who will probably only eat half of what I packed (but I digress), the hallway rug was askew. Did I kick it back in place? I did not. And neither did the five other people who walked over it this morning. I finally scooted it back in place (and I didn't even have to bend over!) and I thought, how hard was that, really? I have walked past a candy wrapper on the ground for days, wondering when someone would pick it up (but, aha! That someone was ME!) Jeff enjoys taking the little stickers off fruit and putting them anywhere but IN the garbage - on the counter top, the edge of the sink, he once even collected them in a notebook (I know, therapy moment there) Last week the dog chewed up some unmentionable items in the garbage in my bathroom and the bits and pieces are still there. Every day when I get out of the shower, I think "I should really vacuum that up" and yet, there it sits, day after day, probably being tracked into other locales. Ugh. Everything is just so MESSY.

My next big project (that I didn't choose and don't want to do) is switching Hayley's and Arlie's rooms. For some inexplicable reason, Arlie has decided she won't sleep in her downstairs room anymore. She has spent countless nights on Hannah's floor in a makeshift bed, or IN Hannah's bed (when Hannah is feeling particularly generous) and finally, last night, Hayley said she would switch rooms with her (actually Hayley was up for this a while ago, but I wasn't sure about putting my teenager right next to the back door for easy, middle of the night escapes with her friends!). After assuring me this wouldn't happen (yeah, right) I finally decided to let them switch. Problem is, the rooms are different sized and layouts so they are going to have to keep the furniture in them and just switch personal belongings (which might seem to make it easier, but the truth is, it's the "personal belongings" part that's impossibly a mess). I absolutely refused to paint the walls, though. So, Hayley will now be enjoying bright pink walls while Arlie will be bathed in purple and pink. Add to this that Hayley has her walls ENTIRELY covered in newspaper clippings, magazine pages, and comic strips. Fun. It might be easier to just remodel and add another upstairs room. If only...........

Well, the dog is loose and in hunting mode so I better go avert his evil intentions. Time to shower and get ready for yoga anyway. Being in a zen-like mode today will do me good (and the coffee and donut after isn't a bad incentive!). Namaste!

The Anti-Mother's Day!

Yesterday I was charmed and treated and pampered by my children (ok, they gave me gifts and when I asked them to do chores they said "we have homework"). Today, however, I would like to point out the Anti-Mother's day. What's this you say? It's every day EXCEPT Mother's Day. It's coming downstairs after "my" day to find a half-empty bag of chips spilling out on the kitchen table, a bottle of red liquid (Kool-Aid?) sitting near-full on the table, several paper towels cemented to the counter top, aided by an ice cream scoop full of melted ice cream, miscellaneous sticky spots on the counter top, the sink filled with unrinsed dishes (apples, peanut butter, cereal, there was enough food in there to feed a small country, all swimming lazily around in murky puddles of ick). Dog hair forming tumbleweeds of sorts and rolling down the hallway with the breeze created by a person walking by. My lovely, velvety-soft blankets for the family room (I envisioned the family snuggling under these while watching a movie some Friday night) wadded up on the floor, full of dog hair after being slept on by thankful dogs (what luxury!). Each of my toilets has a pink ring in it, albeit of varying shades (depending on the level of bacteria growing in there? I don't know, I'm no chemist - but my husband is!). There is a wad of hair on or near the top step that's been there for over a week now - it just changes locations depending on who's foot it's been stuck to. I spilled nail polish remover on my bathroom counter and when I wiped it up, a layer of grime attached itself to the towel I was using (how can you not even SEE the dirt until you add water?). I dropped off some conditioner for the kids in their bathroom and, well, I've attached a photo, because while it's not the worst it's ever been, this is what their bathroom looks like MOST of the time! What you can't see in the photo is the underwear turned inside out, still tucked into the jeans, the wrappers from various feminine products strewn about, the odd toothbrush dropped on the floor (once I even found Hayley's headgear on the floor!), and the sprinkles and dustings of various girly makeup products creating a fine mist upon the countertop.

Now, I ask you, what is the solution to this problem? I've begged, cajoled, pleaded, threatened, asked nicely, whined, thrown a fit, ignored, taken away priveleges, demanded and still can't seem to get this "you live in this house, you need to contribute to it's cleanliness" message across. We have chore charts, lists, family meetings. A couple of weeks ago, I decided not to say anything at all, not to mention the mess, nothing. Two weeks went by and the clothes on the bathroom floor grew to dizzying heights. It was like mountain climbing to get to the shower (take some extra water, a flashlight and call me when you arrive safely!). After there was no visible linoeleum left, and one had to literally high-step it across the mounds to reach the toilet, I did hear a few comments such as "wow, there are a lot of clothes on our bathroom floor" and "where are my jeans?" Oh, I was good at this, let me tell you. But I broke. I could only take it so long (and I'm pretty sure one of the children might have been missing for a time). I demanded that they sort the clothes out and bring them into the laundry. There were so many clothes, the hallway had to be utilized to sort them and it took nearly five days to rid the hallway of clothes (keep in mind I have SIX large laundry baskets in the laundry room to hold the various loads - whites, jeans, towels, darks, colors, sheets).

The fact that we could even GO that many days and not need those clothes is testimony to the "too much" syndrome. Perhaps we should pare down to five pairs of underwear each? That might solve the laundry problem, but what about the rest of the house? Popular women's magazines say "dust the baseboards" seasonally. HUH? I have NEVER dusted a baseboard. It's all I can do to dust my shelves in the family room and I'm not ashamed to say I only do that about twice a year. Sure, I Windex the sliding glass door when the dog slobber has rendered it opaque, but there are only so many hours in the day. I'm happy if the kitchen table is wiped off, the chairs are all pushed in and if someone is standing in the doorway, they can only see the "clean" parts of the house. A few vacuum marks on the carpet and I feel like I'm in a showroom home. And if you can walk in my house and smell Pine-Sol instead of wet dog, then it's a red-letter day.

No wonder I'm eating chocolate chips and blogging at two in the afternoon. Happy Anti-Mother's Day!