“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!
Posted
June 27, 2008 at
1:36 pm by
Rita 
Comments (3)
Posted
June 20, 2008 at
10:13 pm by
