My house is CLEAN!

"Oh frabjous day callooh callay"- my house is clean! Not that I belonged on "Hoarders, Buried Alive" but I'd always been of the belief that cleaning should be on the bottom of my stay-at-home mom list of duties putting playing with my kids, doing fun projects, spending time with friends and going on fun field trips way above "spotless house."

NOT my house

My official philosophy in those early new mom days went something like this: I chose to stay home to spend time with my kids not to do chores so if I have dishes, laundry or other  tidying up I can do it while baby is sleeping.

What a lovely, balanced way of thinking right? Yeah, well that worked with one baby, kinda worked with two but as number three, Mr. Thomas, started to get into things and the amount of laundry I had to wash each week kept growing exponentially I could not keep up during the few moments of quiet time I eeked out of our days. As a result I started to get stressed out about the state of my house.

Then one day a friend came over to my 'clean underneath the mess' house after I'd tidied up in preparation. She took one look around and said (without meaning any offense) - "Wow, your house looks so lived in. Most houses you can't even tell the people have kids but not yours." I think this was intended to be a complement.

Toys, toys and more toys

sleeping on the floor just for the fun of it

the aftermath of making bread with the boys

blanket party

 Ha, ha- this was not what I wanted to hear. It was like thinking you'd lost weight after a baby and are looking good only to have someone ask when you were due (um, four months ago). It really made me look around at my house and wonder how other people saw it and how this reflected on me. I'm sad to say that after that day I was embarrassed to have friends over. I felt like I could never ever live up to the standards that everyone else had for their homes but I still wasn't willing to dedicate my whole day to keeping my house spotless- I knew that I'd be miserable and so would my kids. If I did have friends over I would spend my time looking around wondering if they noticed the confiscated toys piled on the top of the fridge or the basket of unsorted mail by the front door. I know, I know- I shouldn't care but I did and I don't think I realized how much it effected me until recently.Well fast forward nine or so months. I'm six months pregnant and my house is on the market and my it is SO clean.

It took two months of organizing, cleaning and putting at least half of our house in a storage unit to get us here not to mention a whole butt-load of STRESS to get this place ready to sell.  

What I LOVE about having a clean house:

1. The boys have learned how to help out and clean up after themselves so well

2. It feels more peaceful in our house and I don't walk in the door and feel bummed with all the work that I still need to do. 

3. I can find stuff

4. If we need to show the house, it takes 20-30 minutes of tidying, vacuuming and wiping down to have the house ready. It's not super frantic or overwhelming- it all just falls into place.

5. When people come over or come to see the house I'm not constantly apologizing for the mess.

6. I get satisfaction from the evidence of all my hard work and feel like a real homemaker for the first time in my six years of being a SAHM.

What is still really hard for me about having a clean house:

1. I spend a lot of my "spare time" cleaning- it's an uphill battle and my home is the quintessential example of the Chaos Theory

2. Johnny and Brandon are always asking me why I'm so busy and I don't have as much time to play as I did before.

3. With nearly zero minutes of free time for myself during the day I find that when I do sit down- I instantly fall asleep (I'm sure being pregnant has something to do with this too).

4. I miss reading, singing, playing guitar, writing, chatting with my friends, baking alone or with the kids, sewing and doing long term projects. 

5.  And the catch that even Alanis Morrisette would find Ironic- now that the house is clean I don't have people over any more than I did when it was messy cause now I worry about how to KEEP it clean. 

I'm not saying that moms with clean houses don't spend time with their kids- I know lots of great moms that are amazing at doing it all, I'm just saying that it is so far from being one of my talents you'd need a telescope to be able to see it. I know that keeping a house ready to show is like tidiness on crack so I'm just hoping when (if ever) we move I'll be able to keep some of these good habits I've acquired while finding the balance with being the kind of mom I want to be -- especially when new baby comes in a few months. 

At least I've learned through all this that whatever compromise I come to with myself the pay off for all the work and constant attention is not what other people might think but how it makes ME feel and how in some little way I can contribute to making life a little more peaceful for our family within these four walls.  As I sit writing this in my clean house (hee, hee- still makes me smile) I try to remember  the wisdom expressed in one of my favorite poems and hope I can apply it to our home, here on Bleeker  Street. 

Song for a Fifth Child
By Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.
Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due,
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo.
The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep