Cleaning house - inside and out.

My house is dirty.  Not completely cluttered, but dirty.  I can keep my front room fairly clutter free (usually by dumping all the toys unceremoniously in the basement), but it's been way too long since I've dusted in there.  And the bookshelf has a growing stack of papers that my children have brought home from church. One wrong bump and they all crash to the floor.  My dishes are put away most of the time in the kitchen, but don't open the laundry room door to see the giant, precarious stack on top of the dryer or on the shelf or items waiting to be donated to DI.  The floors are swept and vacuumed most of the time, but best to not carefully look at the linoleum and see the giant food stains that need to be mopped.

The superficial cleaning has been kept up okay, but it's been a while since I've done any deep cleaning. Pretty reflective of the rest of my life. It's fairly easy to do the superficial things in life that make me feel like I'm doing okay: going to church, reading scriptures, taking my children to the park.  It takes a lot more effort to do the deep inner cleaning: really worshipping God, studying the scriptures, praying to God and not just saying prayers, finding out what each of my children really need from me, actively looking for ways to help others each day. You get the idea. 

I'm not being hard on myself, just looking realistically at what I need to work on.  If you don't take an inventory every now in then of your house and what needs to be done to fix it, eventually things will break down. The same holds true with my life.  I always think of the quote from C.S. Lewis in "Mere Christianity" that says to imagine yourself as a living house. God starts knocking things around to build a palace, when we thought we were satisfied with a little cottage.  Sometimes it's best to not just wait for external circumstances to knock you around, but to be a little proactive and do some deep cleaning before it becomes inevitably urgent.  When I deep clean my house, I usually only do one thing each day or week and don't worry about doing it all at once.  Time to do the same with my life.

I hate chore charts

I hate chore charts.  I don't necessarily hate doing chores, but for some reason I don't like little charts that track whether or not chores have been done.  I have chore charts for my kids.  It's a little grid I print off the computer that has about 5 chores and a square to put a sticker on for each day of the week. It doesn't work.  My kids will beg me: "Print our chore charts out!" and I'll try again.  Mondays usually are full of stickers of the chart.  Tuesday has about half that.  It starts to disappear after Wednesday.  We'll do this for a week or two before I just get tired of nagging my children to do their chores, and they don't really care whether they get a sticker or not.  So the charts will disappear for a week or two at a time.  It doesn't affect whether or not they're supposed to do their chores, but I stop tracking it.  I guess it's laziness on my part, but if they don't care, I don't care either.  I guess I need to find a better system for making sure they do their chores.  Any suggestions?

Laundry fun

I'm pretty sure no one has as much fun doing laundry as my kids.

Attack of the snow clothes

My house is being overtaken by snow clothes.  Now that there is snow on the ground, we (I and my 3 children) take half an hour to get everyone bundled up in socks, boots, snow pants, gloves, hats, and coats to go play in the snow outside.  I sometimes long for the day when I only have to worry about dressing myself.  When we come back into the house, I've been managing to at least keep the snow clothes contained to the entryway while we unbundle and before the kids take off through the house.  I'm left however, with a giant pile of wet, cold clothes.  They end up everywhere to dry--on the banister, on the dryer, on the backs of the kitchen chairs, on the floor next to the heat vents, etc.  Today I was longing for one of those "mud" rooms some have in their homes that connect the garage and the rest of the home.  I'm not sure the wet mess would dry any faster there, but at least I wouldn't have clothing scattered throughout my house.

Organizing my stress away

When I get stressed, I organize.  I think I inherited this from my own mom.  When she was angry, we all seemed to start to clean.  I don't know if it's because she made us clean, or if we were just trying to stay out of her way and give her space.  Either way, it's what I do in my own life now.  If things seem stressful or out of control, it calms me down to organize something. 

Today I categorized and alphabetized the books on my bookshelf.  If this is something I did on a daily basis, I'd probably start to be worried.  In many ways, this is mindless work for me that helps me feel like I accomplished something, without exerting too much effort. 

I think my sister describes this well in her blog. http://cluffamily.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html

Swinging Monkeys

Folding laundry is a fun time in my family.  Weird, huh? I always hear people complain about laundry, but I guess I don't have enough kids yet or big enough kids yet that it is overwhelming for me. Or maybe I just don't wash things enough!  I do one load a day 3 or 4 times a week.  (Not counting those small quick loads where someone has leaked onto their clothes and they need to go right into the wash). Doing it this way, putting a load in just becomes part of my morning routine and it never gets overwhelming. 

In the late afternoon, in that time period before I need to start getting dinner ready and when the kids are starting to get tired, we all go upstairs with a basket of clean laundry to Mom & Dad's bedroom.  I dump the clothes on the bed, and the kids all climb onto the bed with all the clothes. (Note: I rarely buy clothing that needs to be ironed.) They run around on and jump off the bed while we do the little rhyme of "Five little monkeys swinging in a tree, teasing Mr. Crocodile".  I pretend to be Mr. Crocodile and "snap" them off the bed in a hug.  It's so much fun, that it makes folding laundry (which comes after the rhyme, while they're jumping off the bed onto the pillows on the floor) so much more bearable.  They even ask if they can go to Swinging Monkeys. Granted, they're not folding all the laundry for me, but they see me doing it, and the older ones will try to find their clothes in the pile and even attempt folding them all by themselves.  I keep hoping also that this is one of those things that if I don't make it seem like a horrible chore to do, they'll be more willing to help with it or do it themselves as they get older.  More of the "spoonful of sugar" helping the medicine go down, I guess!

Benefits of a dirty house

Today (as I was actually cleaning my house), I thought of all the benefits of having a dirty house.
1 - My kids are building up a great immunity to germs.  By not having everything bleached and sanitized on a daily basis, I figure it's helping their bodies learn to fight germs better.  By the time they get to school age, they should be set!
2 - Cleaning is still fun to my kids.  If you don't clean too often, your kids get excited to help out.  I frequently have arguing over who gets to clean the mirror, who gets the green sponge, who gets to dust, who gets the spray bottle, etc.
3 - So much extra time.  It's amazing how much you can get done in the 15 minutes you don't spend cleaning every day.  There's extra time to play with my kids, shower, read that magazine that's been sitting there for 4 months.
The next time I get the urge to clean my house, I'll have to remember all these and save myself the trouble. :)

Don't be vindictive.

vin·dic·tive [vin-dik-tiv]–adjective: disposed or inclined to revenge; vengeful
As teenagers, my siblings & I would frequently hear my mom say "Don't be vindictive".  This was usually when one of our friends did something to make us angry or hurt our feelings.  She would tell us not to waste our energy trying to get even or react to them, but to move on.  I had no idea this advice would apply to me as a mother as well.

The other day my children made one of the biggest messes they've ever made of my kitchen.  This picture doesn't really do it justice, as it was taken after they had cleaned up some. The floor was covered with water, milk, carrots, hot cocoa, half a bottle of ranch dressing, every apron, and half the kid cups and bowls.  My 2 year old was sitting on the counting, dumping out a packet of dry honey ham glaze all over everything and laughing.  I was not laughing. 

This is one of those moments as a parent when I'm sure I could have just laughed about the whole thing.  Or, I could have taught them a calm lesson about listen to our conscience and what we know if right or wrong.  Or, I could have politely explained to them why they shouldn't dump food all over the floor.  I didn't do any of those things.  I just lost it.  Granted, my losing it is not quite as scary as it could be, but I was furious.  Apparently when they had made a giant mess several months ago, I didn't quite get the point across. My 4 year old said "Sorry we made such a mess mom.  We were having fun."  My 2 year old doesn't know the concept of remorse, so he was still laughing.

I was angry enough, that I just wanted them to be punished somehow and feel guilty for what they had done.  I wanted to be vindictive.  I remembered something my wise sister had told me before - that the point is not to make your children feel guilty, because they won't; the point is to make them understand that there are consequences for their actions.  I'm good at feeling guilty, though.  It's something I inherited.  And I think that because of that I wanted my children to feel guilty about what they had done.  It actually took me at least an hour before I felt like I was over it and not angry at my children for their actions. 

I understand that they're just little kids and they're not trying to be mean.  They also don't quite understand the concept of "wasting" food by dumping it out or of not wanting to clean up a mess. But, wow, it's hard not to feel vindictive even of little kids sometimes.  It's one of those things you're never told before you have children.  As parents, we still have to move on and get over the things our children do, just as we did with our teenage friends.

A spoonful of sugar

Being Mary Poppins is exhausting.  It's hard work to make things fun and exciting for my kids.  It would be so much easier in many ways to just not try to make them clean up after themselves, or behave, or go to sleep, or be nice to each other, etc. etc.  But it's oh so true that if I add some fun into these things, my kids enjoy it and do it.  I don't really enjoy cleaning up clutter, so of course my kids don't enjoy cleaning it up.  But if we march the toy animals into their box while singing a song or race the cars back into the box, the cleaning goes much faster and none of us are whining or frustrated.  Of course, I'd still love to be able to snap my fingers and have them march themselves into the boxes.  I just have to tell myself, sometimes over and over again, that if I "train up my child" now when they are young, they will learn and be able to do it by themselves someday.  Right?

The Human Cheerio Vacuum

Why is it that my 1 year old, when given Cheerios on her high chair tray, immediately proceeds to throw them on the floor one by one. If I try to hand her one to eat, she refuses it. However, if I'm trying to sweep the floor, and have a large pile of dirt that includes a Cheerio in the stack, she immediately tries to grab it and put it in her mouth. I find myself having to cover the stack of dirt/Cheerios with the broom until I can grab the dustpan and sweep it up. Otherwise, the human Cheerio vacuum will lunge for it and eat it, no matter how old or disgusting it is.