CLEANING SUCKS

I am one aggravated, frustrated, tired, and in a serious need of a mani/pedi brewer’s wife. I have not posted anything in a while because I have been spending that time trying desperately and unsuccessfully to organize and beautify my home. I no longer want to live in fear of unexpected visitors at my front door, I want toys, batteries, and random crap to have its own place to call home other than the floor, I want my daughter back to sleeping in her own bed, and most of all I want the printer out of the living room!!!

I have a new respect for single working Mom’s. I do realize I am not single and that I am married to a wonderful husband, however he is your typical male and not to mention when you’re trying to make a business successful he is often doing other things that need to get done instead of dealing with the everyday routine house cleaning stuff. On top of trying to just get my home organized I must keep my “extreme over active creative disease” in check.
Side Note: I am happy to report I have managed to complete my project of woodland creatures that I spoke of a few posts back. Please see photos of the completed project(posted to associated blog entry) that I am happy to finally get done. It only took me two years to finally get my daughters room to look like it belonged to her and not a guest room. I wanted to also paint the furniture white, but that project will need to wait. 

While I was spending time painting Adalyn's room the rest of my house paid the price. This was no more apparent than the main bathroom, aka the kids Sponge Bob Bathroom. In the 3+ years that we have lived in this house my husband has cleaned the main bathroom I would venture to guess twice and to my knowledge has yet to ever clean the master bath. I am not sure why I would expect him too considering his history.

When I met Kevin he had actually just bought a house in Charleston, SC and when he relocated to Atlanta for work he decided to rent it out instead of selling it. Being the wonderful girlfriend that I was at the time helped him clean up the house and ready to be rented. Kevin is not one to concern himself how things may look, but just whatever it is that it is functional and usable and the master shower in his house was no exception. (the reason why the printer is in the logical location of our living room) As I took cleaner to what I thought was a frosted shower door, turned out to be a shower door that was uniformly covered in soap scum and hard water deposit. I was both awe struck and horrified at this discover and was even more amazed to learn that he had not cleaned the shower in over the course of the year that he had owned the home. Really?? Yuck. Like most women, I dismissed it as bachelor behavior and age. I was so wrong.

I am not a neat clean freak by any stretch of the imagination. I HATE cleaning. I hate even more is the unfair balance of cleaning in my house. The nastiness has to reach a level of undeniable yuck in order for my husband to take the initiative to clean. He does unload and load the dishwasher and wash the pans and in his logic that is cleaning the kitchen, never mind the white cabinets need to be wiped off along with the counters and appliances. It is the same logic that applies to pretty much all the chores in the house that need to get done. He will do the laundry and on occasion actually sort it into the various assigned baskets, but very rarely does the laundry actually get put away where it belongs. He thinks I am crazy when I say something about needing to wash off the baseboards. Is this something that men develop genetically or a learned behavior?

As I was scrubbing and bleaching out the kids bathroom my “extreme over active creative disease” along with my scientific brain came up with a nature vs nurture experiment that could not only shift the cleaning scales to one more balanced in my house, but in their own homes when they get older. Now that my boys are 6 and 8 they can now do some of this cleaning that I hate so freaking much. My experiment will be one of long term and the results will not be fully known until I have a conversation one day with their future wives. My plan start out by assigning them certain chores associated with various rooms and work up to them eventually cleaning the entire room on their own. I have already started Phase I of this experiment and making them help me conquer chores that is directly related to them like putting away their clothes. It went fairly well with minimal complaints and tears, but it got done. Once I am able to get them to do those types of chores without fighting and complaints I will move on to additional phases and to eventualy to a TOTAL HOUSE CLEANING REVOLUTION. This should be a very interesting experiment (one that will require extreme patience, determination, sense of humor, and a lot of luck and prayers).

 MOTHERS LET US UNITE 

FOR OUR DAUGHTERS AND FUTURE DAUGHTER IN-LAWS!!!

MAKE YOUR BOYS CLEAN!!! 

LET THE SCALES OF CLEANING BE FAIR AND BALANCED!!!