What He Doesn’t Know, Won’t Hurt My Sloth!
Posted
June 20, 2008 at
10:13 pm by
Kadi
“Quick! Dad is on the way home,” my siren like voice echoes across the kitchen, until it reaches the little people who are comfortably resting on the couch and taking in all the Sponge Bob that their little minds can handle without spontaneously combusting. This is the cue that all of my children have been trained to recognize as the signal to get off their lazy keysters and help me get the house in order before Dad walks in the front door.
You see, in our humble abode, the kids and I have a little agreement. I allow the cleaning to be carelessly tossed to the wayside while we engage in cooking lessons, educational bridging exercises, kiddie pool wading and various summer fun activities. The way I figure it, trying to keep the house clean while the kids are present and involved in the messy business of being children, is pretty much a losing battle. Choosing to fight such battles just makes for afternoons filled with nothing but bouts of hair pulling frustration and frantic attempts to erase muddy footprints with the mop before the next stampede of puddle jumpers descends upon the family room.
Why bother?
That is where my husband and I disagree. He is the advocate for preventative cleaning measures and holds the same ideals of keeping a perpetually tidy house, as every other clean freak in the nation. If he only knew how truly disgusting the house becomes every weekday, from the hours of 7:00 am until he returns home, he would probably have a conniption fit. In fact, I have to keep myself from laughing, on the weekends, when I see him anxiously twiddling his thumbs in the corner of the kitchen as he watches us leisurely go from the first meal of the day to the first activity, without so much as a sweep or table scrubbing. He can only go so long, without asking if “I’d like some help tidying up the area before it gets too bad.” Usually I will oblige his need for immediate sanitation satisfaction, but sometimes I will tell him that I’ll get to it in a minute, just for the fun of watching him pick up a towel and peevishly start scrubbing dishes. It is mean, I know. Hey…after ten years of marriage, I have to find some way of paying him back for refusing to use the laundry hamper for the disposal of his soiled garments, over and over again!
Lucky for me, the husband has a knack for finding a bigger, better more efficient way of doing event he tiniest of household chores. Then, when I finally do get around to picking up a mop, there will be a more efficient way of getting the job done, in less time! Thanks to his freakish enjoyment of inventing these methods, I have my five o’clock cleaning routine whittled down to a silky smooth forty minutes. His method even leaves me with five extra minutes to check my email and start dinner. When the mess-a-phobe…er, husband comes through our front door, he sees a clean house, a sane mother, dinner on the stove and is none the wiser. Bwahahaha! But please, keep this between us. It may ruin my ability to sneak in some occasional day time blogging and then life, as I know it, would be much less enjoyable. Shhh, it will be our little secret!
Tags: blogging, chores, cleaning, cooking, Family, housekeeping, Humor, husbands, marriage, messes, sanitation |
11 Responses to “What He Doesn’t Know, Won’t Hurt My Sloth!”
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1. Shelly said:
June 21, 2008 @ 12:29 am
You are one smart mom!
my mom did the same thing
with us growing up.Let your children
play and grow.We can have a nice,neat
and clean house later on in life.
God bless you. S
2. SHS said:
June 21, 2008 @ 4:19 pm
Lord help you if he comes home early one day!!!!
Sounds like you have a happy house! I swear the messiest homes I have been in are clearly the most fun! Good for you!
3. Rita said:
June 21, 2008 @ 4:42 pm
Yeah, there’s no point in straightening up before the end of the day anyway, because it’ll just be a mess again five minutes later. When I have one kid home with me, then it makes sense to clean up after ourselves as we go, because it kind of stays cleaned up. But, with three home, forget it. I can only imagine with 7 home!
But, who was it, it was some famous actress who said that cleaning the house while the kids are still in it is like shoveling snow in a blizzard, it’s just a bad idea.
4. Grandma frm Ks. said:
June 21, 2008 @ 7:42 pm
This is grandma again, I bet one of these days, you girls are gonna see my name and go”oh no it’s grandma again”, just want to say Kadi you are doing it right, said this before ,I’ll say it again, house work will be there til’ the day we die, little kids won’t, and they grow so dang fast, Make memories
5. Christine said:
June 21, 2008 @ 10:27 pm
I have the same method! Although mine is mainly because I want my husband to think I cleaned the house alllll day! lol. My motto is “A Clean House Is A Sign of A Wasted Life”. One day i will have that on a sign in my kitchen!
6. Christine said:
June 21, 2008 @ 10:28 pm
P.S. it was Phyllis Diller who said the shoveling snow quote.
7. Allison G. said:
June 22, 2008 @ 1:05 am
My single-dad friend says “I’m not raising a house, I’m raising my kids”. That’s his stance on picking up the house too much.
8. Jessica said:
June 22, 2008 @ 7:23 am
Kids have no respect for a clean family room. It makes me crazy, however, I’m not the most tidy, so we just kinda live in organized clutter.
The biggest obstacle I have is that I can never find time for those big cleaning projects, like cleaning out closets, organizing book shelves, throwing away broken toys or giving away the ones the kids don’t use anymore. I have a Thomas the Train table in the basement that nobody’s used for 3 years or more.
I’m wondering…am I just gonna have to wait 10 more years before I can get any big house project done?
Ah, kids. They’re such a time-suck.
9. SHS said:
June 22, 2008 @ 11:20 am
Yes Jessica, kids do drain the time….screw the closets…you have doors, right?
I have been cleaning out closets like crazy, know why? Kid has graduated, is traveling, hubby travles, and I have time now. I would rather have the kid little and hubby at home. I am not on the pitty pot about it-just the next chapter in my own book. I officially have no messy closets or cluttered drawers….SAD huh?
10. Rita said:
June 22, 2008 @ 1:17 pm
Oh, I make the kids do those big things, as punishments. If they whine about being bored or they’re fighting, then I have a list of those kinds of chores handy and I go to the next one.
Bored? Fighting? Here’s a garbage bag, clean out the hall closet and I mean do it RIGHT. I will be inspecting in 20 minute intervals.
it’s so much more fun when they’re big.
11. SHS said:
June 22, 2008 @ 3:01 pm
Rita,
I used big awful chores as punishment too! It was great! And she knew, I would save up the yucky ones….baseboards, vents, window sliding tracks, under the frige….hope you can use some of thess ideas! Now she is going to college, and I barely see her-so I hired a cleaning lady!