I'm convinced that many of you feel the
same way. When warmer weather arrives, we are all so ecstatic to be
free of the sick days and winter claustrophobia that we begin to see
our Pinterest boards fill up with cleaning schedules and
de-cluttering tactics promising to enhance our spring cleaning
experience and make our home look like a spread in Southern
Living.
However, I have yet to find such a
schedule that actually seems realistic to me. Yes, ideally I'd like
to do a load of laundry a day or choose one room to deep clean each
day of the week, but I'm not going to kid myself – life gets in the
way of schedules. Although many of these lists have some good tips,
some of the suggestions are just downright ridiculous. One of them
actually lists steam cleaning grout as a weekly task. Um, no. “Ain't
nobody got time for that!”
This is probably a more accurate
representation of what a mother – especially one with small
children – does to keep the house clean:
1) Wake up determined. Clean like a mad
woman all morning, only to arrive at bedtime wondering why the house
looks exactly like it did when she first woke up.
2) Rewash yesterday's mildewed load of
laundry that she forgot about while she was busy making sure the
toddler did not eat caterpillars or hurl himself from the trampoline.
3) Decide that the piles of toys strewn
across the living room actually add to the décor.
4) Spend entirely too much time in the
kitchen fixing snack after blessed snack, scraping dried food off all
the heavily trafficked kid zones, and wishing it was more
environmentally friendly/socially acceptable to use disposable
dinnerware at all meals.
And, you know, various other things
that don't end up on these beautiful Pinterest lists...but don't get
me wrong – I still enjoy reading them and dreaming about becoming a
superhuman organizing machine. It could totally happen, I suppose.
I'm just not holding my breath.
Most of the time, I have a pretty good
attitude about the clutter. It frustrates me that I can't always keep
up with everything, but then I just remind myself that it's all about
priorities. I do what I can during the day, but just like everything
else in life, I have to decide what's most important. I can't do it
all – no matter how many times I read “20 Steps To Becoming The
World's Most Awesome Human Being” or whatever the latest
pin might be.
So that's my cleaning tip – do what
you CAN. Don't be lazy, but don't be overwhelmed either.
Perhaps I'm just too much of a skeptic,
but I just don't think there are any magical tips that are going to
keep me from having to do the SAME BLASTED THINGS every single day.
That's just a part of life. And occasionally I'm going to find better
things to do with my life.
Like dust the fan blades. Uh huh, about once a
year...
