Spring Cleaning

Sometimes I feel as if I clean far too much. Unfortunately when I have very little space to work with, I am not clearing stuff out so much as shuffling clutter from one spot to another. My garage lately has been a sort of catch all for the clutter. It helps the majority of it to not be IN the house, although it’s still out there. I am actually a little concerned about how much is out there sometimes. There are boxes I have not unpacked from Hawaii yet. There was even one box that I tried unpacking and I had to stop when I discovered that a bottle of after-sun gel had leaked everywhere. The gel has lidocaine in it, which is fine for everyone else in the house, but I am allergic to it. (I sort of love how the movers wouldn’t move my expensive lotions that were in a sealed container, inside another sealed container, but they just tossed that bottle in with paper.)

Anyway, my point in all of this is that every year, around this time I get the odd desire to clear out the clutter. I have spent the last couple days cleaning up after a sick kid so this has hampered my abilities to use this desire to clean to much good use. As I look around the edge of my laptop into the living room, I can see the clutter from here. A pile on the chair that shouldn’t be in the living room next to the television, a patrol cap next to the hermit crab tank, some military buckles on top of the piano… All these little sources of clutter may not seem like much but they add imperfections to the picture as a whole.

I am the mean type of mom that wants my children to keep their toys in their room. This works out about 85% of the time until I step on a Lego in the hallway in the middle of the night. I swear it’s like Toy Story and those toys manage to crawl out of the room on their own because according to my children, none of them did it. (By the way, best curse for anyone? Shout “I hope you step on a Lego!” It hurts like fire walking according to some people.) To be honest, my reasons for wanting the toys in the rooms could be considered selfish. For one, I hate picking up toys repeatedly. It’s repetitive, annoying, and painful after awhile, regardless of whether you lean over and pick it up, use your toes, or bend at the knees. Either way, you are pretty sore by the end of the day. Second reason… I hate looking at it. I am an adult, or at least I like to pretend I am, so when people come over, (which is rare, but it happens), I want them to look around and think, “Nice house!” I don’t want that thought to be interrupted with, “Is that My Little Pony?” I have children, yes, but none of them can be considered toddlers or babies anymore. This means, they are old enough to take their own toys back to their own rooms.

Back to spring cleaning though, I need to go through the garage. Normally I look at it and go, “yeah I’ll deal with that later.” Lately I just feel the need to go through it now. I blame the weather. Even for Arizona standards, it has been a very gorgeous spring. It’s like the weather calls to you to open your windows, and then as soon as you do, you see that layer of dust in the windowsill and decide to get rid of it, and while you’re there, you should wash the window, and wow, those blinds are looking pretty dirty too…

Work, Work.

Those of you that play World of Warcraft will probably understand that reference best, although it applies in this situation in many different ways. I may be a stay at home mom but I feel like I never stop working. Every day I get up, take a shower, get dressed, force the kids out of bed, and make them get dressed, feed them, and then get the boys off to school. After that, I have to clean up after breakfast, start some laundry, and straighten up the living room. I feed all the pets, and then open the house up before I start scrubbing the kitchen. Scrubbing the kitchen is a several times a day job if I don’t want bugs to show up and throw a party in my house. I have to do a daily walkthrough in the front yard to check for weeds and pull any that have popped up overnight. (I live in an HOA that sends us a notice anytime they notice a single weed. It’s pathetic.) After this comes dusting, picking up legos, trying to sort through boxes, (we’re still not completely unpacked from our move in December), and then I try to shuffle bills around.

My point here is that my day may not seem exhausting to other people, but it is exhausting to me. Part of the reason I am forced to clean everyday is what I call, space issues. Currently there are six of us crammed into a three bedroom house. We don’t have much storage space, and I have a total of two drawers in my kitchen for silverware and utensils. You can imagine how little cabinet space I have as well. So anytime I have to pull something out to use it, I end up making a mess of everything else around it. Thus, I am forced to reorganize things when I put items back. I have to put all of my groceries that do not go in the fridge, in the laundry room on the shelf. There are no grocery items in my cabinets except for my spices and they are fighting for space with my glasses. (I think the spices are winning.)

Where was I again? Oh yes, working. Constantly. If I cleaned 24/7 I might have a clean house all the time. And I definitely do try. I get mortified if someone shows up and I have laundry sitting on the couch, waiting to be folded. Yes, the laundry is clean but it’s just sitting there where I have ignored it for the last couple of hours while I busied myself with other things because I despise folding laundry and damnit now it’s all wrinkled and I’m rambling. Yep, I hate folding laundry. I can wash dishes all day. I can wash laundry all day. Just please, please don’t ask me to fold it. I have a perfectly legit reason for hating it, too. It feels weird. Like… the texture of the fabric on my hands feels weird. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll fold the laundry. I ignore it at first, hoping it will gain sentience and put itself away but unfortunately that has yet to happen. So, I’ll put on some Supernatural on Netflix, and then fold it without thinking about it as much as possible. The texture usually only feels weird on my hands if I was washing dishes and then I start folding the laundry. I think it has something to do with my hands getting prune-y in the dishwater.

Other than the laundry, the cleaning and organizing isn’t so bad. It just gets old after awhile. I feel as if that’s all I do, all day. As soon as the boys get home, I have to help with homework, and then fix dinner, and then get them in the shower, and off to bed and then I go back to cleaning cause it’s going to be awful in the morning if I don’t. It is the same routine every day with minor variations to the dance. One day the entire house will be dusty, so I have to dust, otherwise my allergies will get bad and so will D’s. (We’re the only two with asthma so far.) Another day, it will be a laundry day that somehow the laundry snuck up on me and hid somewhere so I had to spend all day folding the awful stuff. Or I have to wash everyone’s blankets and sheets because someone got sick, or it’s just time to clean them again, because people really should wash their sheets and blanket every once in awhile anyway.