Cleaning ... AGAIN.

Yes, I know you are probably all sick and tired of my ranting about cleanliness. Hell, I'M tired of it. But here I am, once again, in a cleaning frenzy.

My friend Sarah posted awhile ago about clean rooms. She is right -- sometimes it does get to be a sort of twisted contest -- "I can find THIS many things to do with my family instead of cleaning our house and thus I am the worst housekeeper." As Bitch, Ph. D. said, "Pity me."

Except I don't. I don't care, really, how anyone else lives. And unless they live in absolute filth (read: animal excrement, piles of dirty dishes attracting bugs and vermin, toilet bowls and refrigerators that look like 100 year old science experiments), I don't mind being at their house. Someone else's mess, someone else's dust, someone else's clutter, is not really a problem for me. But if you live in a mess I blame only you.

And logically I blame myself when I live in a mess. Even though there are 4 other human beings and a pug in my household. So I do all that I can to keep it neat. But here is where I have a problem. I have tried to explain this a thousand times and I have just quit since a woman had the nerve to tell me, "People are more important than things." Well, DUH. I mean, thanks, ya snippy little bitch, I NEVER would have placed my husband and children above my kitchen floors on the priority list if you hadn't said that to me. Honestly, I am still burning over that one and it's been a year. Have I mentioned I am a champion grudge holder?

Anyway. What I was trying to explain to this woman (along with a bunch of others) at the time was that if my house isn't clean I am not a good mom. She misunderstood. I don't mean that if your house isn't spotless you are not a good mom. For goodness' sake, no mom who lives in reality can have an always clean house. What I meant was that if my house is dirty, I am unhappy, and if I am unhappy, I am not a good mom.

Yes, I realize my standards are pretty high. I grew up in an immaculate house. My mom worked full time outside of the home in a CPA's office. From January through April 15 she probably worked 70 hours a week. But the house was always clean. It wasn't fancy, but things were put away. Laundry was done. The bathroom was clean. She was the only one who cleaned -- my dad was a throwback to the 50's -- and it always got done.

I have spent about 10 hours cleaning my kids' room and playroom this week. We cleaned the playroom Tuesday night. And yes, part of the problem is that my kids, like so many others, simply have too many toys. They do. And I have to own that I am part of that problem. But honestly, they have a place for each toy or type of toy, they have closets and bins and drawers, and still everything was mixed up. And the Happy Meal toys were all over. We don't eat at McD's all that often, yet here are all these toys. Are they reproducing up there? Are the toys having sex in my kids' room at night, making more useless little toys? I don't know, but the school is getting a 2 1/2 gallon Ziploc bag of little toys for prizes or whatever.

Four garbage bags have come out of there. My kids will draw a picture and then save it forever. Or they'll draw 10 almost identical pictures and save them all. Notebooks full. I have a paper sack full of 4T clothes for the Goodwill. I have not yet sorted through the summer clothes and added winter clothes back into the mix. I am not emotionally ready for that. But I will be able to get to that next week.

I have approximately 15 loads of laundry that need to be done now. My kids are constantly complaining they don't have clothes (or pajamas, or socks -- whatever). Imagine their surprise when I started pulling mountains of clothes out from behind beds, shelves and dressers. From inside the closet behind the dress up box came another mountain. Oh -- and when I emptied their drawers to fold and organize clothes to make it easier for them to put clothes away I discovered socks and underwear in the same drawer as T-shirts, swimming trunks, and sweatsuits. In another drawer was a pile of papers, a stack of baseball cards, a few dozen assorted Legos, and rocks. A plastic grocery bag full of rocks. Not beautiful, extraordinary rocks. Not rocks gathered from exotic, far away locales. Just rocks from the backyard landscaping. Granite, mostly. Just rocks. What, dear reader, am I supposed to do with this?

I guess the bottom line for me is this: I like a neat house. I think it makes a home feel peaceful and welcoming when it is tidy. I think it makes family life run more smoothly when things are in their place, when you can find what you need, when you can count on the keys being hung on the key rack by the door (or whatever). It may not be that way for everyone, but it is that way for me. I don't apologize for being a neat freak. It is who I am.

So yes, I DO get distressed over my kids' room. I probably get a little too freaked out over it. But today I conquered it. It is clean, the drawers are neat, the bookshelves are relatively organized ... it is a pleasure to be up there. So much so that the nightly bedtime story ritual (which I have sorely missed) will be reinstated this evening. Right after the kids pick up their room.

Yeah, yeah, I know. *Sigh*