Rather like Spring Cleaning.
Only in September.
My friends ask me why I do this in the Fall instead of Spring, and I've never had an answer for it. Fall is just when my house feels dirty.
But the other day, as I was scrubbing muddy base boards I realized why I must decontaminate my house in the fall.
Because that's when the kids go away!
All summer long the children are home all day, every day.
Don't get me wrong. I adore having them home all day, every day. And I miss them when they're at school. And I'm not saying the house doesn't get cleaned all summer long. It gets cleaned every day. This year I took full advantage of the readily available slave labor. The house was vacuumed and dusted every single day. But I didn't dust or vacuum every single day. Slave labor is the best labor. It is why I had kids in the first place. That and the fact that my kids are so darn cute. So the house was cleaned ever day this summer. But it was kid clean. Good enough clean. Not Mommy clean. Not sparkly clean.
Which is perfectly fine. Preferable even.
We had other things to do. We had an entire list of fun things to get done this summer, and while we put a sizable dent in our list we did not finish it. We have way more playing to do this fall. My house was kid friendly all summer long. Keeping it sparkly clean would have meant either a) the children could not do anything in the house at all ever. or b) Mommy went crazy following the kids around and fixing things as soon as they touched anything. Neither one would have been a nice place to grow up. I want my children to have a nice childhood. I also want to prepare them to be fully functioning adults some day. I don't think these two goals are incompatible. Nice childhoods can lead to fully functioning adults.
I think I'm rambling. Back to my epiphany.
I realized as I scrubbed my baseboards (and silently cursed my dogs for making muddy baseboards) that Fall is when the children go back to school. It is when I finally have a quiet moment to breath. It is when I get to sit down and really look around. And it is when I actually see the dirty baseboards, and the unsweapt corners, and all the little details that add up to things being a bit messy around here. It is also when I realize the children and I have wildly different ideas as to what "go clean your room" means.
My son isn't too bad.
but he NEVER makes his bed.
My daughters?
Their room is an entirely different matter.
When the kids go to school I finally have time to realize how dirty the house it. Add in the fact that since the children are gone when I clean something it actually has half a chance of staying clean for more than an hour and Fall really is the perfect time to recover from the Summer and make our house a tidy home again.
So the marathon cleaning begins. I'm limiting myself to one room a day so I don't over do it too much. I started with the living room. It is probably the least used room in the house so it wasn't too bad a chore. I got to organize my yarn cabinet which was almost as bad as my daughters' room. I forgot to get a good before picture, but this one shelf should give you the idea.
and TA-DA...
After!
Now that I can find all my yarn I'm going to go sit and play with it for a bit.
I'm stuck on second sleeve island with Pork Chop's Weasley Sweater.
I need a rescue boat! Maybe I'll find one tucked in the kitchen cabinets tomorrow.
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