There is so very much that I can say about this subject but for now here are my thoughts on one aspect: housework. Yes. Domesticity. Man, it's a beast. There is nothing romantic about it!
Honestly, yes, sometimes it can be fun: when I enlist Sophie (and sometimes the other children) in her rare moments of motivation and we play music and spin around the kitchen floor with wet mop socks and the work becomes light with many hands. Sometimes it can feel invigorating and refreshing: when all the rooms in the house are clean simultaneously and dinner is made so nothing will be messy for at least a full 12 hours and I was on an energy-high when I was power-cleaning.
But most of the time it just feels eternal. Never ending. That ecard quip is so on point:
Seriously! I love that ecard. It's exactly how I feel. The front room carpet always needs to be vaccumed. I cannot think of a day when it hasn't needed it (not that I do it every day, but... you know...). No matter how many times I clean up after Claire in her high chair it must be done yet again because, guess what? She always needs to eat. And laundry is a weekly thing, no exceptions. Children must play - and yes, they often play outside or movies and puzzles and blocks are not a big deal and keep the house pretty in tact - but Claire is at that stage where she carries one toy, or thing, from one room to the next and the girls love their crafting and I don't want to stifle their creativity. They do clean up after themselves, but... let's face it, never as well as I want it clean, so in the end I always have some tidying up to do. Yes, we have a dishwasher, but come one, there is still always some pot or plastic item or something that needs to be washed. Usually multiple times a day. Housework is never ending. And I even had house cleaners once a month for 8 months of this year! Which was great! Although I felt like I cleaned before the cleaners came and aside from the deep cleaning they did in the bathrooms and kitchen, I felt like my work was really pretty sufficient.
I'm not really trying to complain. But I am being realistic. It is what it is. And this year, this year without my Ph.D. and with three, not one or no children, has left me without any excuses. I'm not too busy researching congressional documents that discuss food security or analyzing which years had more media documents highlighting foreign hunger. I have been home with my children and homemaking (oh I hate the sound of that word, but this year I've realized that it's a real thing! You really DO have to make a home! It's crazy!) as my two top priorities. (Don't read that to mean that when I was working on my Ph.D. that my children were not my top priority, they were, but I had to balance a bit more...). So yeah. No distractions and I find that homemaking takes up a ton of time. And I'm still not that great at it. I mean, if you do it right and fully it takes a ton of time. I don't. But it still takes a lot of time to make a mediocre home with dinner most nights. Does anyone else struggle with this?
Again, this is just one aspect of 'staying at home' but here is a summary of what I have discovered this past year:
1. Homemaking is a real thing.
2. It is drudgery. Only because it's never-ending. I can do something for a few days, a week or two even - be 'on top of it.' But then I get burn out and I need a day or two off where the house ends up a mess and I don't make dinner and we don't even have leftovers and I get lazy and Marc really has to step in (he steps alongside me in most of these things, just so you know, but in these moments he pretty much has to take over).
2a. When I get burn out I usually treat myself to a girls night and/or become a mad woman (in every sense of the word) and storm about cleaning and griping at everyone else to clean.
3. I like a clean house. I may not achieve it all the time, but I feel SO good when it is spotless.
4. My poor children hear this too much: "Yes, you can do downstairs to play but DON'T get out any toys or mess anything up!" Good thing they are great at imaginative play.
5. Having a small child (ahem, Claire, I'm talking about you) really makes things so much messier.
6. I have no excuse.
7. There is more to life than a clean house.
8. But I do enjoy it when a clean house (and dinner) is part of my life. I think my family enjoys it as well.
The end. Gotta get the dinner dishes finally cleared now. :)
YES to all of this.
ReplyDeleteI must say, I totally agree with every aspect of this post. With one glorious exception- my messy tolerance is high. So my house has to be pretty bad before I get disgusted. So I melt down less frequently than most. I feel like you, in that I don't do housekeeping well. To do it well would be to clean CONSTANTLY. It's just not worth the time. I have that ecard pinned- this is why we are kindred spirits! lol I love and miss you.
ReplyDelete-Kay M.
Yes. Struggle struggle struggle. #7 and #8 especially!!
ReplyDelete