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Monday, March 1st, 2010
Work has been slow lately, so I’ve been doing a lot of online shopping/browsing, visiting June 2010 moms message boards, hovering on Facebook, and watching marathons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. The weather has been cold and miserable, so I haven’t felt like going outside much, and the treadmill makes my back ache for hours afterward, and most people who could entertain me work or are otherwise occupied during the day.
All that equals a lot of time sitting on my butt on the couch. One day about a week ago, I could no longer tolerate the sensation of my butt touching the couch and had a bit of a freak-out. D stared at me with a helpless expression as I tearfully insisted we had to DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING except sit on this couch and watch TV. I wandered around the house for a while, refusing to sit down, until I finally came to the conclusion I could do some laundry.
And to my surprise, the laundry cured my problem! Instead of sitting all day, trying to find a comfortable position for my irritable back, I could stand for a little while, toss clothes in the washer, then in the dryer, and then I could even fold them and put them away! Not only did it provide some interruption to my hours of boring couch-sitting, it made me feel productive and capable, feelings which have been in short supply lately, what with barely being able to roll over in bed, and D and my mother chastising me if I lift so much as a gallon of milk.
So the next morning, I decided to postpone my couch-sitting with a little housework. I unloaded the dishwasher, wiped down the counters, decluttered the kitchen some, sorted the mail, and broke down boxes for recycling. Easy stuff, that took less than an hour, and yet – I felt so much better. The day had barely begun, and I’d accomplished something.
Then and there I resolved to do at least one household chore per day – cleaning a bathroom, running the Roomba in a couple of rooms, doing a load of laundry, running the dishwasher, dusting, decluttering a room. The kind of stuff I normally do, only more often.
Because it’s not that I’m opposed to housework or that I even dislike it. It’s just that I forget to do it on a regular basis, or at least as often it should be done. With only me and D living here, there’s no one to care overly much if the dining room sideboard is dusty or if there are a couple dirty plates in the sink or if there’s a dead leaf stuck to the bathroom rug.
But, while in the past spic-and-spanness hasn’t been at the top of my priority list, I’m not entirely satisfied with this state of affairs. I’ve always been jealous of those people who keep perfectly tidy homes, and I’ve always been insecure about my apparent inability (or more accurately, lack of motivation) to do so. Now, with a kid on the way, and especially with my plan to use cloth diapers, I would definitely prefer things around here to be a little less haphazard.
My new plan has been in action for about a week, and so far I’m very pleased with the results. I’ve enjoyed seeking out ways to fulfill my quota of one chore a day (which inevitably turns into more than one because just wiping down the counters doesn’t take long enough). I’ve enjoyed the fact that there hasn’t been a dirty dish in the sink all week. I’ve enjoyed the satisfaction of washing, drying and folding a load of laundry all in one day, and the fact that there’s no more leftover laundry that kept getting pushed to the bottom of the pile. Best of all, I’ve had actual fun. If I could whistle, I would’ve whistled while I worked!
Already my house is neater, and I feel proud of that, even though it’s mostly in little ways no one would notice if they dropped by unannounced. To a neat-freaky person, my house would still not look like a paragon of cleanliness – there are still dead ladybugs lurking behind the furniture and cat hair tumbleweeds lingering around the edges of the rooms that haven’t been Roomba’d yet and too many issues of Lucky magazine and Entertainment Weekly piled on the kitchen table. Every gigantic window in this house needs cleaning inside and out, all the baseboards could use a good scrubbing, and every room could probably use 10 percent less STUFF.
But it’s only been a week, and the best part of my plan is that I think I can keep up with it. One (or two or three, as the mood strikes me) chores a day feels exceedingly doable, even for a lazy gal like me, even with my giganto-belly and aching back.
They say it takes about 21 days to form a habit, and I’ve got three months till the baby’s here. I know I’ll never be one of those people with a picture-perfect home, but I’m hoping I can at least set my standards a little higher. That way, when people drop by to meet the baby, they’ll be occupied with how adorable she is, not distracted by the dust bunnies.
No kids here (been trying for 6+ years, no luck yet) but my sister had our first niece last November and she is constantly worried about making sure her house is clean enough. In effort to convince her that her baby’s happiness is worth more than I found this poem for her, I hope it hits home for you too! Oh, and btw, do you think what you’re doing around the house might be considered “nesting?” :)
Song for a Fifth Child
Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
hang out the washing and butter the bread,
sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.
Oh, I’ve grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
and out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
but I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.
by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton
First- You’re nesting. (!!!)
Second- Do this while you can, because I was only just able to start getting the house clean again weekly once A was about 5 months old. Even now, it’s hard to do more than a teeny bit each day after she goes to bed. I much prefer cleaning the whole house all at once when she goes for her once-per-week grandma days.
Third- Roomba (Not sure if I spelled that properly). Give me your review. I have 2 cats. Vacuming is a pain in the a$$. I have to vacume often. I have hard flooring in 90% of the house and carpeting in the rec room. What did you pay for it?
As a retired person, I am in my house a lot. I like the doing something every day as opposed to spending a day cleaning. That said, I have a meeting tonight in my home and today will be spent dusting. I do a load of laundry every morning just because I like to do laundry. My laundry is upstairs (in the maid’s room that sadly has no maid in it) and is a very pretty room with a view of trees out the windows.
Glad you are nesting as others have said, it gets harder after the baby gets here. Babies are an excellent distraction, so people won’t notice the cat hair tumbleweeds.
Mrs Marcos, that poem is so sweet! I would definitely rather spend time with the little one than obsess about cleaning, which is one reason I think my little-bit-per-day approach might work.
Emily, I love my Roomba! My one complaint about it is that if I go a while in between vacuumings, I end up having to “clean Roomba’s brushes!” (a robot-voiced woman tells me to do this) at least a couple of times during its hour run because of all the cat hair. But I ran it the other day in the center hall (our hall is very big), and it made it through the whole thing without having to be cleaned or emptied. The hall picks up a lot of hair/dirt/leaves because it’s a high-traffic area. I think the difference was that I’d vacuumed it more recently. So my recommendation is to run it fairly frequently, and then it’s easy-peasy. I paid a little over $200 for it, bought it at the Circuit City going out of business sale for a little bit cheaper than I could’ve found it online at the time. It’s the one that’s supposed to be able to do three rooms at a time, but I find it works better with two rooms.
Teresa, I think with me being home all the time the mess bugs me more. When I worked outside the home, I didn’t much care what the place looked like and definitely didn’t have the energy to deal with it. Then I did more of the oh-god-someone’s-coming-over-burst-of-cleaning thing, which I would prefer to avoid!
Oh, another negative point about the Roomba – it doesn’t get the floor as spotlessly clean as the upright vacuum. And sometimes some cat hair still gets stuck to the edges of rugs where the Roomba is transitioning from wood floor to rug and kinda drags, I guess. But it makes up for this slight problem by being able to easily go under the armoire, under the clawfoot tub, under the bed, etc., places I can’t reach with a regular vacuum, and of course, the fact that I can be doing something different entirely while it’s running.
Hmmm. Me wants a Roomba.
Double hmmm.
Damn I really do need a roomba. I wish they would make one that could climb up on furniture too. Everything I own is coated in white dog hair!!
Yeah, we still have to use the regular vacuum for the furniture. But since we don’t allow them in a lot of rooms, we mostly just have to worry about the living room furniture.
My theory is the messier the house, the stronger the immune system ;)
Excellent point, Lenise!