A New Kind of Clean

-->

Before I had children, I spent one morning each weekend cleaning my house. I would de-clutter, dust, vacuum, do laundry, scrub, and polish. When I finished, I’d look around and marvel at the general order of my life. I basked in the glow of an entirely clean house. When R was born, I tried to keep up with my pre-child standards of cleanliness and soon found the practice to be discouraging, but accomplishable. By the time K came along, I found it to be downright impossible.

The problem is, as soon as one room has been cleaned to my satisfaction, I look behind me and find that my children have not sat idly by while I strived for cleaning perfection. Instead, they have dumped an entire bucket of Legos in the middle of the living room floor and strewn half-naked dolls down the hallway, their underutilized clothes lagging behind them.

Better Homes and Gardens and HGTV rarely feature glossy photos or spotlight homes decorated with The Avengers action figures and varying shades of Disney-princess pink. Not once have they addressed how to arrange light sabers on your living room couch for maximum impact. In fact, the houses they feature must not be occupied by anyone under the age of 21 (or anyone who actually likes to EAT at a dining room table for that matter, because seriously, who actually has time to put napkin rings on cloth napkins?)

I’ve reached a new stage of acceptance though, and now realize that my entire house will never be simultaneously clean again. Instead, I spot clean (this usually happens when something in the house gets so messy or cluttered that I snap). For example, when I can no longer find the kitchen counter to slice an apple, it’s time to sort through the mail, art projects, tools and toys that have accumulated there. (My husband tends to keep his distance when I fall into one of these moods, lest he be unwillingly recruited. He’s a wise man.)

Good Housekeeping magazine has a featured column each month that lists the “best” way to clean something, and also the “good enough” method for the same task. I really took to this idea the first time I saw it. I think it appeals to my perfectionistic side, while also acknowledging reality. So, I’ve decided to try my hand at it. Let’s call this the “BEFORE KIDS” method vs. the “AFTER KIDS” method:

LAUNDRY

BK:  Laundry days were Wednesday night and Saturday morning. All laundry was collected, washed, dried, and folded while enjoying favorite television shows. Laundry was then promptly put into dresser drawers and linen closets and clean towels were hung in the bathrooms. Iron-able items were creased, pressed, and hung in closets.

AK:  Laundry days are whenever someone complains that they’ve run out of clean underwear. Also, how many times can a load of wrinkled clothes be run through the permanent press cycle before you absolutely must take them out and fold them? If your kid wants a particular article of clothing and it’s 10 o’clock the night before they need said article, is it acceptable to pull it from the bottom of their laundry hamper, check for stains, not find any, and then throw it in the dryer with a wet washcloth and a dryer sheet to “fluff” it up? (Not that I have ever done this.) Iron-ables? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

BATHROOMS

BK:  Bathrooms were cleaned every other weekend unless it was deemed that they needed additional attention on weeks off. Clean counters, mirrors, toilet, and tub. Vacuum up lint and hair and mop bathroom floors. Polish fixtures with a paper towel so they are shiny. Empty wastebasket.

AK: Bathrooms are cleaned when I can no longer stand the sight of them. Quickly wipe counters off with a piece of toilet paper. Check around toilet for pee stains. (SIDE NOTE: If a woman can accurately polish her pinkie toenail with a tiny nail polish brush without getting any polish on her toe, why can’t a five-year-old boy hit the inside of a 1-foot wide opening in a toilet seat while he’s standing directly over it? Mothers of boys, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about here.) Wipe toothpaste spit splatters off of ceiling (How does that stuff get up there?!)

TOYS

BTK (Before two kids): “There’s a place for everything, and everything in its place” was my motto. I attempted to buy tubs and organizing systems. At first, we tried to sort all of the kids’ toys out so that pieces of sets stayed together. After all, the world would come to a halting stop if Trio blocks were mixed in with KiNEx pieces.

ATK:  In our attempts to get everyone into bed before the 10 o’clock news anthem starts, we have resorted to just throwing things into toy boxes and bins and letting them fall where they will. You can imagine the scandal when Shredder spent the night in the same tub with Cinderella.

DUST

BK:  Dust all surfaces at least once per week. Pick up objects on top of surfaces and dust those as well.

AK: Dust builds up healthy immune systems, right?


BED MAKING
BK: I loved the crisp feeling of hospital-corner sheets and the sight of duvet covers and pillow shams before falling into bed at night.

AK:  Check to make sure I'm not going to be eviscerated by the spiky tail of a plastic dinosaur who got lodged between the sheet and comforter before falling into bed at night.


Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the sidewalk while it's still snowing.  ~Phyllis Diller

The Diet Plan

Last summer, K was too young to understand the concept of ice cream. If it was just she and I running errands, I could stop by the DQ or get some frozen yogurt, and she was blissfully content to watch as I spooned creamy deliciousness into my mouth, none-the-wiser as to what she was missing. I will admit that even in recent months, I have taken advantage of the fact that her car seat is still rear facing and quietly consumed a frozen treat out of her eyesight. (All mothers have done this at one time or another.) However, this chapter is quickly coming to an end, replaced by a cry for “I kem! I kem!” if we even pass within several yards of a Dairy Queen sign. (Maybe that’s a sign I should lay off the “I kem.”)

A couple of nights ago, I was sharing a cup of chocolate and peanut butter with her. I took a bite, and then spooned a bite into her mouth. We went on like this for several minutes. A bite for Mommy. A bite for K. She was really getting into the pattern and began opening her mouth as soon as I had consumed my preliminary bite. As she was chewing a particularly large spoonful, I took two bites in a row. She raised her tiny index finger, looked at me from under scowling eyebrows, and screeched, “No Mommy!” Kind of like this:

I think I’ll call it the “I-HAVE-A-TODDLER-WHO-NOTICES-EVERYTHING-PLAN.” I’ll let you know how it works.

The Story of Us

Fifteen years ago this spring, my husband and I went on our first date. He sat behind me all year in Mrs. S’s Sophomore Honors English class, and I could tell when he was concentrating really hard due to an increased intensity in his gum chomping. We exchanged relatively few words throughout the year, except to discuss class-related topics like which pages were due in the novel we were reading, or whether or not we needed an annotated bibliography for a research paper. (What can I say? We’ve always been big on the romance.)

I would like to say that I fell for his brains (he graduated with top honors, and I’ve always preferred smart guys, even at 16), but the combination of dark hair and green eyes with laugh crinkles didn’t hurt. He played football, and ran around with some of the same people I socialized with, but our interactions were mainly relegated to English class.

One day, I was complaining to my friend across the aisle about how far behind I had gotten in A Tale of Two Cities. (In my defense, it was basketball season, and I had after-school practice or games five nights a week.) J leaned over and handed me his copy of Cliff’s Notes. I don’t really remember that he said anything, just handed it to me. (For all I know, he just really wished I would shut up about the damn book.) I passed the final test for A Tale of Two Cities, and J and I broadened our conversations to include topics outside of participial phrases. However, not in the way one might imagine.

Instead of face-to-face conversations about music and movies and teachers and mutual friends, J began e-mailing me. At first, just three or four words at a time. This was back in the days of dial-up connections and AOL. I would rush home after cheerleading practice, boot up the computer, listen to the weea-weea-weea sounds of the modem, and then hold my breath until the e-mail screen popped up. If I heard “You’ve got mail,” my heart would jump into my throat with excitement. All for a message like, “How was your day?”

This went on for months, business-only conversations at school, and then the e-mails when I got home. I was really puzzled. Did he like me? Or did he just want me to return his Cliff’s Notes and was sending subliminal messages through cryptic e-mails? Finally, one day I decided to type out, “Maybe we should do something some time.” I quickly hit the send button before I could change my mind. I waited, and almost immediately, saw his earth-shattering response: “Okay.”

There was just one problem. My parents. They had this Draconian rule that anyone I was going to ride in a car with had to come to the house, have dinner, and meet the family. (Now that I’m a parent, this seems much more reasonable than it did at 16. I even think full criminal background checks will probably be in order when my kids start dating.) There was no way I was going to go through the humiliation of telling J that he had to come to my house before we could go out somewhere. So I did what all 16-year-olds do in these situations. I found the loophole. Instead of having him pick me up at my house, I told him to meet me in the parking lot of a local grocery store. I don’t remember that he ever questioned this, although it must have seemed like a strange request at the time.

I was almost 30 minutes late for our date. As I drove to the grocery store that night, my brain raced with the thought that he might have left. Maybe he thought I stood him up. But when I pulled into the parking lot, there he was. We saw a movie on that date, and while I can’t say that I knew that I loved him then, I was definitely in serious like.

We dated throughout high school, and then chose different colleges our senior year, making the mature, adult decision to go our separate ways and experience college life unfettered. (The actual truth is, I was too proud to be that girl who follows a guy to college, and I went away to school broken-hearted over this “mature” decision.) There were friendships to be made, flirtations to pursue, and relationships to explore (and I guess we studied somewhere in between). Two years passed quickly.

One night toward the end of spring semester in our sophomore year of college, we found ourselves at the same party. Some old, mutual friends were getting together to celebrate the coming of spring and the end of another school year. I was dating someone at the time, and for weeks after that party J would call my cell phone during the most inopportune times (Thursday night bar-night, Friday night date-night, Saturday night movie-night, you get the picture). He was nothing if not persistent, and it took its toll on the relationship, which ended. I still refused to go out with him though (I know this will surprise those who know me, but I can be very stubborn.) He persisted, and I finally agreed to Round 2 the following summer, more than a year after that party.

We dated another 2 ½ years until we were both graduated and gainfully employed. I was living and teaching in our hometown, and one day, J came over to my duplex, and handed me an old scrapbook that I had made of our high school and college days together. Puzzled, I flipped through the photos, old ticket stubs, and the cover from A Tale of Two Cities. At the very back of the scrapbook, a 1x1” square had been carved into the remaining blank pages, and inside the hollow opening was an engagement ring. It was the next chapter in our scrapbook.

On days like today, when the weather is still feeling spring-like, I often think about the decisions we made that led us to where we are today. At 16 and 21, you really don’t think about how the choices you’re making will shape your life going forward. What if Mrs. S had sat us across the room from each other in English class? What if I had been a model student and actually read A Tale of Two Cities as I was assigned to do? What if I had never agreed to go out with him again in college?

Some day, R and K (Okay, probably only K. Do boys care about this stuff?) may ask to hear the story of how we went from being J and S to being their parents. I hope they will identify with parts of this story as they go out into the world and make their own life-defining choices, and that they will recognize that their parents were young once, and felt all of the things that young people who are first falling in love feel. And I hope they will feel a connection and sense of understanding from us when they experience love and heartbreak, and that they will have the perseverance to persist when they find the kind of love worth persevering for.