I'm working on our love story, Folks. But it's not ready, yet. It's hard to write in any kind of continuity when I only have five minutes at a time! I don't know how Pioneer Woman does it!
Have you ever thought about how your standards of housekeeping change as you have children? I washed our sheets (just ours - one bed out of 9) yesterday and couldn't remember the last time I did it. Was it two weeks ago? Or two months? Yuck.
There has been a gradual change in my definition of "clean" over the last 12 years as our family has grown from 2 to 10. There was a big decline when #4 came along, for sure. And maybe another decline when I was expecting #8 and felt horrible.
I grew up in a home where cleanliness was really next to Godliness. Really. And it was clean, my friends. My mother trained me well. And for awhile I managed to keep up. Then life happened.
Overall, my conclusion is, we live like pigs.
No more vacuuming each and ever day.
No more washing all sheets once a week.
No more mopping all of the hard floors twice each week.
Washing windows? Only if there are fingerprints where I'm trying to look out.
And baseboards? When DID I have the time have to clean them so often?
The bathrooms, well, that's necessary. At least when they reach "disgusting".
I don't iron anymore.
Ever.
Seriously.
And the oven only gets cleaned when someone leaves Legos in it and I preheat it for dinner and it catches on fire.
I can't remember the last time I dusted. O, yeah, when the Coach's family came over two weeks ago. But before that. . . eewwww.
Scrubbing tile grout - well, isn't that what bathroom cleaner is for?
My cleaning toothbrush and I are distant friends rather than close companions.
And I'm sure the light fixtures are full of bugs. Not that I've looked.
And yet, days go by. The children are happy. And I'm learning.
Learning that it doesn't really matter.
That "clean" is relative.
That compared to the rest of the world, we live in amazingly sanitary environments.
Except for my boy's bathroom.
But that's another story.
3 comments:
I'm looking forward to this "love story" we keep hearing so much about. :) Okay, so I've already heard it ... at least some of it... but I'm still very excited to see it all written down...
So I would just like to say that I have BEEN to your house and it has always been very clean! :) You have very high standards. I think you are just trying to make all of the rest of us feel better! :)
Amen to that, Karen. I was dealing with trying to sort out this very issue shortly ago and posted about it on my blog, but your thinking seems much clearer and that was very well said.
bethany
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