I’m not a cleaner.
My house is not a dump, per se, but it’s certainly not gleaming. On a scale from 1-10, 10 being spotless, my house is average. A five or six. It’s something I have always had nagging guilt over, but continue to not do anything about.
My Mom and my sisters are very tidy and like them, I LOVE a clean house. I love the fresh scent of disinfectant in the air! I love actually seeing my floors and counter tops. I love coming home to a house that doesn’t need immediate attention.
I’ll tell you what I don’t love though, and that’s cleaning.
I’ll come up with every excuse to avoid putting things in their proper places on any kind of consistent basis. The only thing keeping my home in decent condition is the fact that I run a home daycare throughout the main level. Just don’t go upstairs. Running a daycare on the main level means the second level doesn’t get touched.
And how quick I am to blame the unsightly rooms on the fact that the daycare demands so much of my attention. How hard would it be for me to dedicate an hour a day to cleaning upstairs? And what would that hour do for my peace of mind in the long run?
I talked to my Mom about the fact that I never seemed to grow up and learn how to clean like a real mom. You know, like the kind of mom she was. With as many kids as she had, our home still managed to look picked up. How did the cleanliness gene skip me?
And I’ll tell you why my Mom is the best. It’s because every time I doubt myself, she manages to say something brilliant that pulls me out of my guilt-fest. Even though she’s a cleaner and prefers a clean home, she can still get inside my brain and see what it is that makes me tick the way I tick.
“But Kathy you spend so much of your time writing! I don’t do that, your sisters don’t do that…that is something that is unique to you and it’s wonderful!”
And when I guffawed at that and insinuated that blogging is something I often do to help me avoid cleaning she said,
“Look, I love a clean house. I enjoy nesting and making my home beautiful and for some people, that’s just what we do. You choose to spend your time being creative and when you leave this world you will have so many wonderful things left behind. My clean rooms are just clean rooms…they’re not going to follow me from here.”
I love her.
I didn’t want to ruin her wonderful sentiments by mentioning it’s likely I could learn to balance writing and cleaning and complete both tasks on a fairly regular basis.
Nor did I mention that while her clean rooms might not be any kind of legacy for her to leave behind, she does have six kids who sing her high praises.
And furthermore, since I’m the kid who neglects cleaning so that I can write about whatever is on my mind, and in this case, how brilliant I think my Mom is…she’ll actually leave this place with a clean house AND a ton of written testimony to her greatness.
She wins.
In the mean time, I am hereby challenging myself to spend just one more hour a day cleaning an area of my house that does not get the attention it needs.
Make that 45 minutes. An hour seems like a lot, no? 45 minutes is good.
To be honest I could probably get a room clean in 30 minutes or less if I stay focused.
So there! It’s final…30 minutes or less of my time will now be spent cleaning everyday! I’m turning over a new leaf dammit.
Starting tomorrow.