Cleanliness is next to Godliness

 

It’s been so long since I’ve participated in the Spin Cycle, I didn’t want to let yet another week pass without my participation, so forgive me for digging in to the archives and rejuvenating a previous post for the benefit of the Spin.  Edited for content, of course, and to freshen it up a bit to keep it interesting. 

Once upon a time, when I was working 60+ hours a week in the Corporate World, I always somehow managed to keep my house or apartment spotlessly clean. It was second nature, making sure things were put away.  Possibly bordering on OCD with everything having a place and everything in its place.

Fast forward to when Princess Nagger was born and I decided to leave the Corporate World to stay home with her, I still kept the house neat and tidy. It was a bit more of a challenge, particularly with the hubby being prone to leaving things lying around willy nilly, and Princess Nagger’s toys growing with each passing holiday and birthday.

She inherited the propensity to leave things laying about from the Absent Minded Professor. But since I wasn’t ensconced in multiple hours of working away from home, I rolled with it, and things were mostly always in their place.  I didn’t have to worry about drop-in visitors because things were clean enough to forgo embarrassment.

As Princess Nagger grew out of babyhood into the toddler stages, the number of toys continued to grow, as did the mess. She has inherited the pack-rat mode from me, unwilling to part with things because she may want or need them “some day”.

I had a crazy dream that when she started school, I’d have plenty of time to surreptitiously weed out the excess and restore order to the chaos that had grown over the years.  Now that she’s in 4th grade, that dream has yet to become a reality.   It’s amazing how much you anticipate all this free time when you choose to leave the workforce and stay home to raise the kidlets – somehow those 24 hours in a day simply aren’t enough to get everything done.

When Little Dude joined our family last summer, the collection of ‘stuff’ has doubled, along with the tornadic mess both kids are guilty of, plus the grown kid also known as the husband. It’s a miracle if my house is picked up on a weekly monthly basis, forget about the daily mode I used to do once upon a time.

Now I simply dream of a tidy house and hope that dream comes true some day.  I’ve thought about hiring someone to clean, but I’m so OCD I’d end up having to clean first before having someone else come in and clean because I wouldn’t want to be embarrassed by the mess.  Ahem.  We’re planning on moving back to my home state of Washington this summer, so it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. 

Though the impending move will force me to take stock and do some serious purging because I really don’t want to move all the accumulated stuff cross country.  Hopefully we’ll find the perfect house that has extra rooms specifically designed to contain the every day messes – like a cool playroom for the kids like this:

And definitely a big-girl playroom for me and my crafty stuff, something similar to Martha Stewart’s cool craft room:

Then maybe I can adopt the godliness aspect of cleanliness.

How do you keep order in your house? Or is your house like mine, with that ‘lived in’ look?

.

This Clean Spin Cycle was brought to you part by the lovely Gretchen at Second Blooming, whose house I imagine as spotless and fun.  Checkout the other Spinners and see how clean they are, too – maybe we’ll get some tips that can be put into practice.  And by ‘we’, I mean me.

.