Nine and a half years ago, I left my full-time job to be a “stay-at-home-mom.”

  I was a social worker, a career with small financial compensation, but immeasurable compensation in just about all other ways.  Since then, I have worked and I have also been employed part-time, off and on. 

Sometimes work is not paid.  I don’t mean the kind of work that we all do as parents, or even the kind of work that’s involved in volunteering on those occasions when the task is done primarily to benefit yourself or your kids–like volunteering at the church bake sale (tends to be political to bump up the value of your family name in that community), or volunteering in your kids’ classrooms (everyone knows that the children of parent volunteers do better in school), or decorating the float for the taekwondo school for the town parade.  It’s helping others, but really the motivation is to make things better for yourself and your kids in some way.  No, I mean actual work, like writing, or going to school, or working in an animal rescue facility or whatever.  Work that is basically the same as employment, but it’

s not paid.  Or maybe not paid yet.

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I’m not. I swear to you, I am not. But, I feel all the time like the lead singer for a one song band. I’m the Lili Taylor character in Say Anything. “I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about cleaning. And I’m going to sing each and every one of them tonight.” Except, instead of a rollicking “That’ll Never Be Me”, or “Joe Lies,” my songs are: (the title hit), “I’m Not the Maid,” “I Was NOT Put Here to Clean Up After You,” and my all time favorite, the melancholy ballad, “There’s Got to Be More to My Life Than Cleaning Up Other People’s Messes.”

I don’t know whether I live with a bunch of primates or whether they’re just normal people and my expectations are too high. I know my mother (and her mother before her) was a neat freak. We had a cleaning person who came once a week, but my mother required that we clean the house before the cleaning person arrived. Not to impress the woman, but because she didn’t want to waste the half-day of cleaning she bought with the woman doing dusting, or making the beds, or cleaning the mirrors and windows. She expected deep cleaning from her cleaning person. So, my sister and I cleaned the bathrooms, did laundry, wiped down the kitchen, dusted and vacuumed every week before the cleaning person came. Actually, the vacuuming and bathroom cleaning was done mid-week, so those things were done twice a week, once by us and once by the cleaning person. Anyway, you get the idea, you could go into my mother’s house any given day, any given time and it would pass the strictest inspection. I thought she was nuts then, but now that I realize the cost of cleaning help and the value in making your kids do chores, I appreciate her reasoning more.

Somehow, I’ve dropped the ball. My mom used to refer to my house, endearingly as “The Filthy Little Hovel.” And then we’d laugh. I’ve already commented on my family’s sense of humor in another entry. I really do think she meant it to be funny, though. I thought it was funny anyway.

My house is not as clean as the house I grew up in, but I can’t really gauge how it compares to other houses, since I assume that whenever I’m invited over to someone’s house, they vacuum and dust and put everything away right before I get there, like I do when I have company. So, I can’t get a glimpse of how they really live.

But, this is how things go, this a snapshot of this morning: I get up and go to the bathroom. The toilet paper roll is empty, even though I just filled it yesterday. I get a new one from the cabinet (which I can reach from being seated on the toilet, meaning anyone could reach it from there, too, even the person who used the last piece of toilet paper) and replace it. I wash my hands and go to dry them on the hand towel and see a piece of crud (Toothpaste? Cream cheese?), grab it down and toss it in the laundry and put a new one out. I go into the kitchen to start the coffee and my feet get sticky from something that someone had spilled between 9 pm last night and 6:15 this morning. I clean it up with a soapy rag, I’ll have to mop (again) later. I get my son up, make him breakfast, he has a small spill and starts spazzing because the napkin holder on the table is empty. I get napkins for him in a hurry and fill the holder. And that was literally just the first fifteen minutes I was awake. There’s more to add, but you get the point.

I yell, I pout, I go on strike, I use behavior modification, but it’s like I’m a zookeeper accidentally locked on Baboon Mountain indefinitely. These people I live with, they’re like a different species or something. I don’t understand them!

I put them to work, and the older two are good at it. They vacuum, they dust, they change cat litter and fold laundry. My husband is very helpful on CLEANING DAY. He really does pull his own weight when he’s sent with a list of chores. It’s the in-between that makes me crazy. I want to have a cleaned-up house so that my day runs smoother. I mean, the whole purpose of going through the effort of replacing the roll of toilet paper, putting out clean hand towels and keeping a napkin holder on the table is so when you need those things, they’re there, ready for you to use. But, it seems I do all the replacing and never get to reap the benefits! I go around and tidy up, and tidy up, and tidy up, and I never enjoy making the messes that I have cleaned up. Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Wasn’t he also rumored to have a closet packed with a dozen sets of the same suit? Maybe Einstein had an idea there. I fantasize about going total minimalist. Living like a Franciscan nun, with just the necessities in barely furnished rooms. Bed, desk, dresser. Table and chairs and cooking appliances. Couch, rocker, television (I’m not a nun, afterall). But, I’m sure my family would find some way to make it all sticky and misplace half of it anyway (“OK, who used the bureau and didn’t put it back?”)

But, I have to admit, the final song on my cleaning album is entitled “Someday, My House Will Be Clean and Quiet…and Then I Will Hate It.” I know this is the hustle and bustle of family life, this never-ending battle against clutter will eventually end when the kids are off at college and have their own places to muck up. Then I’ll have endless hours of peace, when everything will be exactly just where I left it, and I’ll remember these days fondly, because like Carly Simon said, these are the good old days. No matter how grimy they may be.

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