Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Erin's prayers are answered seven years too late

First time doing laundry on my own after Baby Z was born.
Baby in the bjorn; laundry in the stroller.
I've never been a slob, but I've never been a neat freak either (except maybe when there were finals to procrastinate). When I was working, Yancy and I kept the house (pretty) clean and (mostly) tidy.

Now that I am a homemaker, the mess bothers me so much more and the cleaning brings me so much more satisfaction because I'm staring at it all day long.

I love having my bed made. I hate having dishes in the sink. I love storage bins and neatly folded stacks of clean towels. Do these things always happen? Nope. I'm not my mom yet, but I'm getting closer.

Occasionally I have to remind myself that Yancy has not had the same perspective shift, and it's not fair for me to unilaterally change the standards that we developed together over the past couple years. He is not going to care as much as I do about keeping the house clean for the same reason I didn't care this much last June. And that's fine, especially when he notices and appreciates the work I'm doing.

As a reward for reading this post, I offer you a cleaning tip I read on Amy's blog that I've found to be golden the past few months. All her suggestions are good, but number six is my favorite.
To prevent chore pile-ups, schedule a few regular chores every day. On Mondays, vacuum upstairs and clean the glass. Tuesdays are for dusting and mopping. Each day has its special chores. These regular tasks take such little time that you can complete them without much hassle. Scheduling baseboard scrubbings, on the other hand, can make for a depressing every-other-Monday. Plus, you might not have time for the task on that day. But if during a regular mopping you get motivated and scrub the baseboards, now that's something to be proud of! Deep cleaning is much more satisfying if done on the fly. 
Following this advice motivated me to clean our living room levelor blinds, which were installed by the previous tenants. You know a cleaning is over due anytime you discover something you thought was beige is actually white.
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6 comments:

  1. JulieJune 30, 2011 at 6:08 AM

    That is how I grew up. My mom had things we did every day, things we did on a certain day of the week, and then we'd deep clean every once in a while. I have been trying for the last few years to get myself into that kind of regular routine. It hasn't happened yet, but I tell myself that my mom had already had over 10 years of practice by the time I was born! :)

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  2. ShawnaJune 30, 2011 at 8:06 AM

    In our house you did the obvious (dishes and general tidy up the rooms) pretty much on a daily basis... but Saturday was the day of dread... large windows (and plenty of them!) to wash, mopping and vacuuming, bathrooms to scour, and usually something was scheduled for a deep clean. Saturdays were pretty much a day to be dreaded because you had all this work you were expected to do but, as a child, you failed to see the reward of a clean house afterward. How wonderful that we grow up and can see these benefits for ourselves. It doesn't make the cleaning any easier or enjoyable, but at least we can see the benefits for ourselves once we are done.

    I laughed at the beige being white comment... I've been there before...and its the nastiest feeling to realize something you didn't think was so bad turned out to be completely filthy!

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  3. Leah ZJune 30, 2011 at 11:00 AM

    From Erin:
    Thanks for the shout-out to my OCD; I'm touched you remember. Way to go for rigging the stroller up as a laundry basket, and being diligent with your chores. I too have a chore schedule, though they're really more like "guidelines" than the rule (unfortunately). And yes that was meant to reference the movie "Pirates..." Shame on you if you have not seen that movie.

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  4. Amy BrintonJune 30, 2011 at 8:17 PM

    In our townhouse in Baltimore, I once spent two hours scrubbing half of a section of blinds to take them from gray/beige/gross to white. The next day I saw those same blinds at Wal-Mart for $9 each, and I thought, "I'm worth more than $4.50 an hour!" So I tore out down all the blinds and installed new ones. Ah! I agree that motherhood brings out the yearning for cleanliness in all of us--now I understand why my mom was constantly harking on us for our mess.

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  5. Leah ZJuly 1, 2011 at 7:40 PM

    Amy, remember how you used some sort of hourly rate to determine how much The Villa owed us for the flood in our apartment? Same sort of logic, but I love it. You're definitely worth $4.50 an hour.

    Erin -- I think the first time I watched Pirates was with you, on a laptop, in that pink place we lived. Details are fuzzy.

    Shawna -- I've seen that house if it's the one in Chewelah. Yes: Huge windows.

    Julie -- That's a good point. Ten years is a long time to develop a system, and in addition, ten year olds are pretty useful. A kid Lenczi's age could dust or clean mirrors. Baby Z would just drool on them.

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  6. Amy BrintonJuly 6, 2011 at 1:48 PM

    Also, I meant "harping on us." I was harking back to the time when my mother would harp on us.

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