Erin 6:00 am Hit the snooze twice
6:15 am Get up, make coffee
6:20 am Put all five cups, three bowls, and eight pieces of silverware in sink from the night before, clean off the juice, food, and spit cup marks from the counters, pickup the toys strung out in the halls, and put away his razor, toothbrush, deoderant, dirty underwear on the end table, and dip mess
That is only a 5% portion of my morning. This is also filled with wasking dishes, doing laundry, letting my dogs with indecisive bladders out and in out and in, and then cleaning up my family’s mess after the breakfast round again. I spend 90% of my day simply picking up after my family, or yelling at them to pickup even the most obvious of messes. Dusting, window washing, and scrubbing my whole house only takes a few hours, but just keeping the place tidy, is the full time job.
When the kids are in school, and my husband is at work, I am the happiest. Everytime I clean something……. one hour later, it is still clean. If I empty the sink………. one hour later, it is still empty. When I clean up the toy story graveyard from my halls……… one hour later, it is still clean. Now, I am not being sarcastic or lying. Everytime I use, dirty, break, or drop something……… I pick, clean, sweep, or put it away. This was a habit created by my neurotic mother. Granted, how I evolved into a clean freak was not ideal, but the end result has its perks. I love clean.
I do not expect my children or my husband to be extra psycho like myself, but I do expect the common knowledge of,” If something is dirty, clean it. If you see trash on the floor, pick it up.” This brings me to my latest experiment. Last week I placed a wadded up paper towel on the floor (it was very visible) not even eight inches from our trash can. I watched everyday as my family walked past, stepped over, and even moved it two inches out of the way without ever picking it up and placing it in the trash can. Ohhhh I was pissed. Even though I got the results I expected, it infuriated when my oldest (13) asked ME if it was trash when she was taking ojut the trash!
My family has this mindset that if they leave it alone long enough or ignore their mess, I will eventually clean it up. Let’s face it, I do. So I began yelling…….. alot. Everytime one of my children or my husband made a mess or left something out, I immediately nagged and barked until they cleaned and finished the job. My weekend script is,”This is not my mess, I am not touching it.” I do not recommend this process however. Your throat will hurt, and your house will always look rough.
I have always preached, and battered it into my children’s brains saying,” Always leave a room better than you entered it.” I am anxious for the school week to begin now every week, as that is my clean house time. Unfortunately to achieve that clean house everyday, I have to clean up their mess every morning. I can only hope that when they grow up (even though my husband is 33), they will not live in filth. So my house is never clean in the sense that there is dust, my pictures frames are dirty, my windows still have fingerprints, and my mirrors are never shining, but damn my house is tidy! It is always tidy enough for visitors, but only on weekdays!
