House Cleaning – It’s Not for the Faint of Heart

I hate house cleaning.  I love a clean house of course.  I just don’t want to be the one to do the cleaning.  I find cleaning the house just one step above paying bills.  And the only reason I pay my bills is so that I have a house to clean, ironic isn’t it?

I can remember exactly two times in my life when I found house cleaning to be exciting.  The first time is when Ron and I moved into our own apartment.  I like to call that “playing house.”  You live in a euphoric state when you get your first place.  It’s fun to keep house then.  You want to keep things neat and clean.  It was fun.  Of course the fun only lasted about a year.  By then, the newness of having my own place had faded away only to be replaced with the drudgery of cleaning.  The only thing that made it even slightly palatable was that the place was only 600 square feet and took me about two minutes to clean. 

The next time that I felt so excited about house cleaning was when Ron and I bought our first house.  Now this place was just about two sizes bigger than our apartment and I remember clearly vowing that from the day we closed until the day we sold it, that I would keep it brand spanking new looking.  Well, fifteen years later, it no longer looks brand spanking new and that vow has faded a bit in the background.

I envy my friends that go neurotic about house cleaning.  I applaud their efforts of devoting every Saturday to a thorough cleaning, and every night after work to picking up and dusting.  But to me, that is just way too much work to do after, well, work.  I don’t want to spend my nights sweeping and cleaning.  Heck, I’m lucky if I can get dinner on the table and the dishes washed.  And Saturday?  Well, that thought can go away.  Shouldn’t this be the day that I spend with my husband and kids?  And if not them, then at the mall?  And of course Sunday is out of the question, because I completely accept that it’s a day of rest.  Which doesn’t leave me much time for cleaning.  How unfortunate. 

My friends all told me that when I had kids that I would become this uber-housekeeper.  That I’d want my floors to be spick-n-span so that when the kids crawled around on the floor they wouldn’t put weird things in their mouths.  Well, I showed them.  I subscribe to the theory that what doesn’t kill them only makes them stronger. 

To me a house if for living in, whether you have kids or not.  And while we don’t live in a pig pen, I do believe that it’s more important for my kids to be happy than for me to be yelling at them all the time if they make a mess.  I think it’s a nice trade off.

Fortunately my husband is an easy going sort and after nineteen years of marriage I think he reads the writing on the wall.  Let’s face it, there’s way too much to do in life than worry if there’s dust on the table and clutter on the counter.  I can live without a perfectly clean house.  What I can’t live without is a perfectly happy family.