Five in a Row

Most of you know how much I value a clean house. I like when everything is in it's place and I don't feel burdened to be cleaning. I like being able to walk on the bathroom floor and not feel like my feet are coated in dust, or worse. I like being able to actually sit in my favorite chair. In fact, before I had Micah, I would strive to make my home look like it could be a model home.

I like all these things, but I'm horribly unorganized. I try and sometimes it gets better, but some things suffer because they've never had a place to call home. I have two defenses for this. First, it was very much a learned behavior when I was growing up and secondly, my house doesn't have enough storage; it just doesn't. There is only one closet in the house where we can keep the vacuum cleaner and the only other storage beyond that is a few cabinets in the laundry room. I guess my biggest conundrum in cleaning isn't the scrubbing, dusting, and vacuuming - it's the clutter - all the stuff that just piles up. It's my various necklaces and earrings that were changed so often during the week they never got put back. It's my bags. I have a work bag, purse and diaper bag and I switch uses at least twice a day. It's the mail that piles up on the counter despite my constant attempts to make sure it's sorted and put in it's proper location (trash, shredded trash, file cabinet, magazine rack, bill slot). A maid wouldn't help my cleaning attempts because she wouldn't know how to put away all my clutter.

I've spent so many Saturdays cleaning up the house that five weeks ago I put an end to it. October was a pretty bad month for us. Josh was gone twice and was consumed planning the Ashe Bashe. There was one week where Josh was gone and we received very disheartening news. I tried to picture how overwhelmed and burdened my husband must be feeling during that week and I responded in the best way I knew how. I wanted to make sure that when he returned home on Friday night, our home was clean. That way our Saturday could be family time. All we had to do was play and lounge around, watch our Thursday night shows that had been waiting on the DVR and take naps. There was no dusting or cleaning out the clutter or doing dishes first thing Saturday morning. It was just keeping up with the day's little messes. It was fun and peaceful and I felt like I was able to really spend time with my family. It was a sanctuary from the week's chaotic events.

It's been five weeks since I worked so hard to have my house in order by Saturday. I liked it so much that I'm trying to make it a habit. I've made five in a row now. While my house still isn't perfectly clean each week, it doesn't matter because it's clean to a level where I know that I can relax. I can have my quiet time without worrying about the mess around me. I can read in peace. I can crawl around and act like a total dork without seeing stuff to do out of the corner of my eye. I'm able to put my family first on the one uninterrupted day I have with them.