I am not a big fan of cleaning. In fact, just for the sake of utter honestly, I pretty much hate it. And at this point in my life, I think I mostly hate it because I'm currently finding it rather discouraging. The girls are 2 1/2 and 1 1/2, right? So, they play with something for anywhere from 30 seconds to 20 minutes at a shot and then move onto the next thing. And I'm fine with that. I don't really mind the trail of toys they leave throughout the house. Fingerprints on the couch and tables don't freak me out. Crumbs on the carpet don't send me over the edge. That sort of stuff doesn't really bother me. But at a certain point, I become so utterly overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that is literally everywhere that I get kind of stuck. I don't know where to start. And the end is not ever in sight. And that is what I find discouraging, annoying, overwhelming and irritating.
So, readers, got any tips for a crazed mother of two? How do you keep up? Do you keep up? Is it worth keeping up? Is it even possible to keep up?
Dear Crazed Mom:
ReplyDeleteI remember that your Auntie Linda, after a week of daycare children, made sure that on Friday late afternoon or early evening, she cleaned and straightened up everything so that on Saturday morning she and Uncle Ted could enjoy and appreciate a relatively sane environment on their weekend. With the comings and goings of the weekend, the house didn't get too messy so they enjoyed relative sanity on those two days of the week. Would having Friday and Saturday as your "adult" house help?
I am a freak about not
ReplyDeletehaving "crap" laying all over the place in our house. Having four kids makes it incredibly difficult for me to ease my anxiety about all this said "crap" as they are constantly running around making messes!
Here is what I do to make it easier on myself....
1.)The kids have a playroom right off of the kitchen/family room where all the toys stay. I have a rule that we play with the toys only in that room. That way they don't get dragged all over the house and there is less for me to clean up at night after they go to bed! If I don't want to clean up the playroom, no big deal, I just close the door and forget about it:)
2.) I take 10/15 minutes to do a "quick clean up" around the house each night after the kids go to bed so that I wake up to a somewhat put together house in the morning. This helps a TON as I don't start my day looking at a big old mess, that just would make me crabby!
Just a few things I do to help me feel sane.... I think it is impossible to have a truly "clean" house ever when you have little ones running around. :)