Cleaning House, Somebody’s Gotta Do It

Yes, my home is a mess. And I don’t just mean that I have a couple books lying out and the laundry still to be folded. It’s a real disaster. Now, nobody has ever accused me of being a particularly stringent housekeeper to begin with. Nobody has ever had to plead with me to just let something go and nobody has ever, ever made any claims about eating off my floor. I’ll even admit that we have lived in states of squalor worse than this back in our newly-wed days if only because we could all but abandon our apartment and only come home to shower and sleep. This may be the worst it’s been, however, since the children have arrived and since I’ve had to really live in my home.

Why is it so bad? How have I let things slide this far? Doesn’t it bother me? Yes, it bothers me. Nobody likes starting their day by rummaging around in the dryer for a clean undershirt for their baby, picking dried-up Play Doh off her high chair, and then hand-washing a clean spoon and bowl for her breakfast. And that’s the baby, who I at least try to keep relatively clean. Don’t even ask about how the rest of us are living.

Here are my excuses. I don’t have time. I live with slobs. And I really don’t have time. Other people with young children at home with them all frickin’ day have wondered how I manage to write as much as I do. Where do you find the time, they ask? I just smile sheepishly and say that I stay up late and drink a lot of coffee. That’s true, too. But the whole truth includes a fairly comprehensive disregard for all and any housework. Add to that a husband who absentmindedly lays things down wherever he happens to be, never once wondering where it belongs, or even imagining that things have a proper place to begin with; a three-year-old whose favourite new game involves taking every single toy that he owns and strewing them across the floor; and a spit-up-y baby who is totally hogging the laundry machines. So, even if I occasionally squeeze a bit of clean-up time into a day, give it an hour and nobody would be the wiser.

There once was a time when I started approaching the basic level of household hygiene held by the majority of people. About two years ago I realized that I was having an incredibly hard time caring for my one baby and keeping the house (well, apartment). It really shouldn’t be this hard, I thought. So I bought a book. It is an excellent book and deserving of it’s own review, really. Suffice it to say that I was able to at least get a grip on how a household should be organized and how to schedule and prioritize your cleaning duties. (If you wait to clean the bathroom until all the laundry is done, for example, you might never ever get to it.) Those were good days. I would wake up and set to work caring for my baby and my home, all according to a gently flexible schedule.

Now that L’il I is six-months old and really settling in to a nice consistent nap routine I should probably try to come up with a nice workable schedule again. I really should. But I’m dubious this time. Because even with only one co-operative child I found that keeping on top of the cleaning was a full-time job. Trying to work from home with two kids, it seems downright impossible. And who has time to even put together a time table, let alone follow one?

But I will. I swear I will. Just as soon as I do some banking and make lunch and take them to the park and write this post and visit my grandmother and interview that person and send off that pitch and, uh, take a shower. Then I’ll map out a cleaning schedule. Or maybe I should just keep working until I can afford to hiring someone to my cleaning for me.

Image courtesy of marcoPapale at Flickr.