Cleaning...and other lessons from my mother

I really don't like to clean - but I do like a clean house. 

I blame my mother for wanting things to always be clean and organized.  Her house was spotless, but welcoming.  And she always had a plan on how to keep it that way.  Monday - vacuum.  Tuesday - dust.  Wednesday - laundry.  Thursday - kitchen.  Friday - bathrooms.  (Okay, this may not have been the actual schedule, but you get the picture.)  My mom's job was maintaining a house, a family, a budget - including planning meals, monitoring activities, taking on side jobs when money was tight - and she was darn good at it!

She became the impossible standard to which I compared myself.

It wasn't always that way.  I was a pretty messy teenager.  Ask any of my friends.  My bedroom was not known for its made bed, organized closet, or dirty clothes that actually landed into the laundry basket.  My mom taught me the value of just closing the door.  (I embraced that lesson when I became the mother of a teenage daughter.)  Sometimes, all you need to do is ignore the mess and hide it so it doesn't offend the people to whom it matters.  And if it didn't matter to my friends - it didn't matter to me.  (You should have seen their rooms!)

But, she also taught me the correct way to make a bed (military corners anyone?), why it is a good thing to put away clean clothes before they become a wrinkled mess, how to sort those same clothes when doing the laundry so whites did not become pinks, how to iron, how to sew on a button and repair a torn seam, how to bake, how to plan a meal, how to organize a kitchen, and how to "straighten" for company.  All valuable lessons that I didn't truly understand the importance of until I moved out of the house and started living on my own.

When Lance and I were first dating, he invited me over one night to his place for dinner.  I was pleasantly surprised when I saw how clean the apartment appeared to be - at least at first glance.  It wasn't until I was searching for a garbage can under the kitchen sink that I discovered his real method of cleaning...hide the evidence!  Yes, I found a cabinet full of dirty dishes where I thought I would find a garbage can.  And while the bathroom toilet was quite clean...let's just say I should not have peaked behind the closed shower curtain.

Once Lance and I were married, I slowly discovered that when he said we should "clean" for company he did not mean clean as I defined it.  To me, cleaning meant dusting, washing the floors, vacuuming the carpets, cleaning the entire bathroom, changing out hand towels, scrubbing the kitchen and making the house sparkle.  This would take hours and made me exhausted just thinking about it!  But, what Lance really meant was that we should straighten and hide the "junk", clean the toilets, throw in some vacuuming (those lines on the carpet indicated a floor that was always clean), and make sure the kitchen sink was spotless.  Once I figured this out, my life became much less complicated. 

Ever my mother's daughter, I still felt compelled to fully clean the house each week - whether we had visitors coming or not.  But, while my mother was an accomplished homemaker and made a career out of her family and home, I had chosen a different path.  I was a child of the feminist movement and I was going to have it all - career, family, and a clean house!  The problem with this - I also wanted to spend time with my husband and daughter doing fun stuff.  I did not want my weekends to be dedicated to cleaning - and fortunately for me - neither did my husband. 

And that is how I - the person who still shops the clearance rack looking for bargains, repairs her own clothes, replaces buttons, thinks duct tape and glue are a girl's best friend and just can't throw away something that might have another use - ended up hiring a cleaning lady.  I have to admit, I still feel like I need to apologize for this luxury, that I should be able to "do it all" with out any help, but I wouldn't give up her bi-weekly visits up for anything!

Knowing I will never be able to duplicate my mom's standards in the same manner as she did is hard to accept - but I am learning - with a little help from my friends...