It's really all Mama's fault. She set a fairly poor example in the housekeeping department.
I mean, she wasn't...dirty, exactly. Housekeeping was simply low on her priority list. She would much rather have spent her time cooking or crafting or gardening or canning or hanging out with her friends at the lake or doing projects with and for me than cleaning the house.
Almost all of my best friends families had a housekeeper. Or, I should say, because it's the truth, a maid. As in The Help. Their homes were pristine and well-kept - the linens ironed and the silver polished. The dirty clothes would magically disappear from the clothes hampers and appear in their drawers and closets, beautifully laundered and folded. Heaven.
At my house, things weren't quiiiiiiite like this. All the work that had to be done was done by Mama. I do have memories of helping her make the beds, neatly folding square "hospital" corners with the flat sheets, something that the younger generations have never even heard of, having been raised with fitted sheets. I also remember having a booming business ironing Daddy's shirts. I charged 15 cents per short-sleeved shirt, and 25 cents per long-sleeved, as cuffs were trouble. I wrote up bills and presented them to him for payment. But everything else was done by Mama.
I have to admit that I was a bit ashamed of our not-so-perfect home. While the surfaces of the house was generally tidy, the further reaches often housed terrifying horrors. Closets were booby-trapped to collapse on your head if you pulled something out, horrific science-experiments grew inside Tupperware in the refrigerator, for all I knew, Jimmy Hoffa might have been hidden under one of the beds along with the junk and teeming dust bunnies. It was embarrassing.
I'm afraid that I was a lazy child, and my room was always a disaster. To Mama's credit, she didn't clean my room for me, but expected me to do it myself. I'm sure she assumed that this would teach me work ethic, and to take care of my things. But I don't think this worked. I think that what it really did was to lower my standards. To make me used to living in a mess. I think that if I'd grown up surrounded by tidiness, I would have felt the need to keep things in order.
When I moved out on my own, slovenliness followed, as any of my early roommates could tell you. Once, when I was in my 20s, my apartment was robbed, and when I called the police, they walked into the bedroom and said "Wow, they really tore this place apart!" And I was forced to tell them that no, that was the way it was before the robbers got there!
Luckily, I have learned. I am MUCH better now, due in part to the influence of the women in Jimmy's family. Mommy, Aunt Grace and ALL the cousins are absolute neat freaks. Their homes are always perfection. And so my standards have risen.
Back when we used to make more money, we had a housekeeper who came a couple of times a month. Her name was Lucy. This woman was amazing. I loved her. For Lucy, housecleaning wasn't just a job, it was a calling, a vocation. When I walked into the house after she'd been there, I was filled with joy - everything glistened. This woman would do brilliant things, like take all the jelly jars and condiments out of the fridge and scrub them. She would move all the furniture and even the refrigerator, and scrub underneath them. I considered the house to have been Lucyfied. But alas, we haven't had Lucy for many years now, and I really don't want to know what might be found if I moved the refrigerator!
Usually, I manage to keep the place from falling into squalor. A while back, I developed my cleaning plan, the idea of which, I stole from Ma Ingalls. If you remember Little House in the Big Woods, Ma had a different day for each of her chores - laundry, churning, baking, mending. I adapted this to modern living, as I seldom do much churning. Monday is laundry, Tuesday is bathrooms, Wednesday is the outside (porch, backyard), Thursday is the kitchen (includes dumping old stuff out of the fridge) and Friday is floors, dusting and Windexing all glass surfaces. If I manage to keep this up, our house stays in order.
However.....
I have not managed to keep this up. Over the last few months, our home has completely devolved. It's starting to look like...Mama was the housekeeper. I'm sorry, Mama, but it's true.
The laundry has absolutely taken over our home. I keep doing laundry, and then folding it, but never having time to get it into the closets/drawers, so it ends up in the laundry basket, and eventually, I forget what is clean and what is dirty, and have to wash it all over again! The closets are HORRIBLE - the floors covered with shoes and dirty clothes. All of our dirty clothes hampers are half-filled with seldom-worn clothes which need to be either hand-washed, dry cleaned or mended. Jude's drawers are filled to the brim with clothes he's outgrown.
The laundry room and the office have become dumping grounds for everything I'm not sure what to do with. The other day, I just happened to stumble upon the gas bill, which I had haphazardly tossed onto "the pile" JUST in time to keep it from being shut off!
The outside of our house looks like a gypsy family has taken up residence. The front porch is a disaster, and I haven't scooped the doggy poop in the backyard in ages. I'm thinking it's now fertilizer.
And Jude's room? It has started to look...JUST LIKE MINE WHEN I WAS A KID! And he DOESN'T CARE! Which says to me that HIS standards have lowered considerably.
I must do something to get things in hand.
And so, I have decided to take a week off writing, and concentrate on reclaiming our world. That's right, next week, there will be no Random Tuesday Thoughts, no Mama Kat's Workshop. I WILL come up with a Spin Cycle on Friday, because it's my thing, and hopefully, by Friday, my world will be a bit clearer.
I'm feeling better already, just having made a plan. Our home is about to be Lucyfied. Please send moral support.
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Please go visit all of my other "Clean" spinners...
SuziCate at The Water Witch's Daughter
Ginny Marie at Lemon Drop Pie - NEW on FRIDAY!
Vandy J at The Testosterone Three and Me - NEW on FRIDAY!
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Next week on The Spin Cycle...
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My mom was a much better housekeeper than I am! The house had to be clean, and it was our job to help her on Saturday mornings. We had to vacuum the stairs and scrub the bathtubs. I shared a room with my sister, and you could tell which half was mine because she was neat and my half was a mess!
I did get my dresser cleaned off because of the Spin Cycle, though! Otherwise, it would still look like the "before" photo!
Good luck with your Lucyfying!
Posted by: Ginny Marie | 01/25/2013 at 05:30 AM
good for you! You can do it!
Posted by: Alaina | 01/25/2013 at 06:30 AM
I do OK in the house keeping department. I vacuum semi regularly, the dishes are done, most of the time, the bathrooms get cleaned about once a month, laundry is done every two weeks. Turbo is keeping his room cleanish, and it's about time to start having Bruiser help clean up. I don't like the process of cleaning, but love the results. We often invite people over so we have to straighten up, it's as good an excuse as any.
I have a spin up:
http://tttandme.blogspot.com/2013/01/spin-cycle-clean-up.html
Posted by: VandyJ | 01/25/2013 at 07:25 AM
What a great idea. I may just have to take a week off from work just to finish the unpacking and clean, sort and purge my house. I hate doing it on the weekends since that is OUR time.
Posted by: Michele | 01/25/2013 at 07:47 AM
My mom's idea of "cleaning" is swiping at a cobweb with a dirty sock on her way to the laundry. I try to do better, but it feels so much like that epostcard that's all over Pinterest, "Cleaning when your kids are in the house is like eating oreos while brushing your teeth."
Posted by: Sarah at 32Flavors | 01/25/2013 at 08:40 AM
I have those same kind of closets...and cabinets - I tell my husband it's a gift, lol!
Posted by: suzicate | 01/25/2013 at 03:22 PM
Take it slowly! Do not want to pull a muscle cleaning. Save that for some new love making position. And this is from the woman that kept shoe boxes in my dresser drawers to keep undies, other intimates, socks and pj's in nicely, separate stacks when I was 12. My older sis says just to run hot water in a sink or tub, pour in some pinsol, keep the lights low and use lots of candles. Folks think you have been cleaning for days.
Posted by: Janice Adcock | 01/25/2013 at 08:30 PM
I like assigning certain tasks to certain days. For me, the Sabbath is a busy one. i do all the sheets and towels. I lysol and scrub bathrooms. But during the week, it is kind of a laundry free for all. I don't mind doing laundry but I HATE putting it away. So I save all those piles for my day off: Friday. I have housekeepers come bi-weekly but they kind of suck and I should fire them. Good luck reclaiming your house.
Posted by: kate | 01/27/2013 at 06:35 AM
Have the drive spin up and ready.
Posted by: Janice Adcock | 01/30/2013 at 04:47 PM