Dirty is...Better?

I'm sure you're thinking, "What's with this woman? How does she have the time to write all these posts? Does she sit on her butt in front of the computer all day?" Its not that I have the time really, but I have a very over-active mind, thoughts and ideas constantly running around in there, and I've found that doing this blog is very therapeutic. So I MAKE the time. The baby is down for his mid-morning snooze, my daughter is snacking and watching Donald Duck, so here I am once again. I refuse to feel guilty about the dishes in the sink, and the load of laundry sitting in the dryer, calling for me to come fold. I was so full of P&V yesterday that I did like a weeks' worth (for me) of house chores. I conquered the Everest of laundry (we're talking six or seven loads, even blankets, which for me is on the bottom of the priority totem pole), vacuumed, windexed, even MOPPED, people. Mopping is hellish, because not only do you have to clear all the chairs out of the kitchen, once the actual mopping is done you have to wait and wait for the floor to dry. During which time my baby is screaming at me from his "cage" (the crib) because he knows whats up and wants at that floor!

As I was cleaning my room this morning, it occurred to me that sometimes, dirty is better. At least when it comes to the house. Here's why I came to this conclusion:

• Opposites attract, therefore - a clean floor attracts footprints, sticky juice spills, crumbs, etc; clean mirrors and glass attract fingerprints; you get the idea. So we can conclude that with a tv covered in baby handprints, one more will not be noticed (plus, how cute is that wee little handprint? Its a memento!), one more layer of dust on a shelf is indistinguishable from the bottom layers, and so on. Makes sense, right? (in a twisted way, lol)
• If the entire house is clean, perfect and wonderful, a precedent will be set. Why can't the house always be this clean? Just what do you do all day? Yesterday, the house was spotless, what chaos occurred today to make it like this? Don't you have any control over these kids? Why are you banging your head against the wall?
• A perfectly clean room looks like a museum, and any size mess stands out. When the entire room is messy, it looks lived-in and comfy.
• You want your guests to feel welcome and at-home, right? What's more welcoming and familiar than a messy house? Its like saying, "See, we're just like you! We're not high-and-mighty perfectionists that won't let you sit on the 'for-display-only' sofa." And that unique smell that every house has? You know that smell. You don't notice it when you're in the house, but if you leave and come back, it hits you. That smell is like a fingerprint, unique to every family. I can walk into a house and instantly know several things: if they have pets, what they've eaten for supper, how many kids they have, what they do for fun. Our house smells like four rowdy sweaty kids, two kitties, shoes, gasoline (that lovely odor comes from the many 'toys' in the attached garage, which is right by the front door), and maybe a smidgen of perfume, because I have a small obsession with fragrances (my absolute favorite - Hugo Boss XX). So when people come over, instead of some impersonal no-name air freshener scent, they get "Eau du Kasha" and they feel like they instantly know us. Right? Please say right! lol
• "If cluttered houses are hog heaven, then this house is really heaven on earth." Enough said.
• Showhome-clean houses are downright intimidating. If you go to someone's house, especially a house where there's kids, and its like a showhome, two things go through your mind: where do they find the time, and more importantly, aren't these poor kids allowed to play? Where's the toys? The piles of kids clothes created from the kids stripping down for a good session of wrestling in their underwear? Where's the dollys and costumes and coloring books and legos that show those kids are using their imaginations?
• Last but not least, time spent on endless housework is time not spent with the kids. I can spend an hour washing walls and cabinet doors, or I can cuddle with my daughter as we watch Looney Tunes. Is she going to look back on her childhood and remember how the house was always amazingly clean, or is she going to think, "My mom did crafts and colored pictures with me"? All those old cliches are so true -- childhood goes by so quickly, they're grown before you know it, remember yesterday when you were a baby. I actually feel like a better parent when I ignore the housework and focus on them.

So there's my justifications for why my house is not, and probably never will be, perfectly clean and spotless. Not saying that I wouldn't LOVE a perfectly clean house, but I'm enough of a realist to know it wouldn't stay that way for long. I AM trying to teach the kids to clean up after themselves, and let me tell you, threatening to throw anything on the floor in the garbage works GREAT. But, it backfires real quick when you realize that you just threw that brand new $50 toy in the bag and the kids are daring you with their eyes to follow through. In instances like that, just sneak into your room, stash the toy on the top shelf in your closet, and give it to them for Christmas. They'll be ecstatic to get the toy back after all that time, and you've just saved yourself $50 on Christmas shopping.

By now, you're thinking I'm a lazy messy slob, and cheap to boot. Haha! You know what? All this 'dirty is better' is really my way of tricking my mind into calming the hell down. Do you ever watch Jon & Kate + 8? I'm a lot like Kate. I can be nitpicky, demanding, obsessive about keeping the house clean. I'm not to her extent, where I'm handwashing the kitchen floor up to 3 times a day (I just about puked when I heard her say that!!). But I've had my moments where I've followed the kids through the house, from mess to mess, and hit the boiling point and the kids have ran and hid because a fire-breathing dragon has consumed their mother. Ha! I laugh about it, but they don't. Hahahaha. So yeah, in moments of "cleaning crisis" where I hear myself threatening them with weeks of grounding because I've stepped on a lego, I take a moment ("Serenity now! Serenity now!" Seinfeld never gets old) and force myself to remember -- kids are kids, messes are messes, what's more important in the grand scheme of things?

It also helps that my hubby has learned through experience not to make any comment whatsoever on the state of the house, the absence of clean underwear in his drawer, and the fact that the tv screen is obscured by a thick, filmy layer of baby handprint upon baby handprint. He's the best hubby a neatfreak-slob could have.