I Need A Maid

Today is yet another cleaning day. (Didn't I just do this?) I can't believe how fast Monday comes around. I was tempted to just let it go today because I have a dirty rotten cold and just wasn't feeling up to cleaning. Yeah, that didn't work because I have a problem. I have a major case of O.C.D. when it comes to cleaning day. It makes me absolutely crazy if I can't get it done. So, I buckled down and got it done.

Only one problem: When you really need your kids to be good while you clean so that you can get it done fast before you run out of steam, they won't. I was happily cleaning away as I listened to my iPod since the loud and up-tempo music helps me not only get the job done quicker, but it helps drown out the kids. I figure that if they really need something, they will come get me. Otherwise, they can work out their little tiffs. Yeah, so my kitchen looked like this:

AAAHHHH. Nice and clean.

And my bedroom looked like this:

Ahhh, clean sheets. Can I crawl in that bed and go to sleep yet?

The bathrooms were clean and smelled like freshly bleached towels:

I hadn't heard from my kids for a while and then Lana comes in as I am finishing the last bathroom and says, "Mom, Hayden is making messes." Great. Can't wait to see. Apparently the iPod also makes Mommy unable to hear when the kids are getting into trouble. Dang it. I just can't win. So I walk into the girls' bedroom and this is what I find (a common occurrence in our house):

Great, I get to clean up about a thousand books. Why do I have to like books so much? And then, I walk into Hayden's room and find this:

So much for giving the Kate Goldfish crackers to keep her busy. Grrrr.

And do you see any children in those pictures? Nope. They made their messes and left. So what were they doing? They were making a mess of the family room! At lest they were playing and having fun together instead of fighting!:)

Even the kids themselves were a mess. Hey, I never claimed to be an attentive mother on cleaning day.

So off I went to clean up those fun messes and as I was in the bedrooms cleaning up books, vacuuming, and doing a little bit of huffing and puffing under my breath, the kids were busy in the family room. This time I got a good surprise. When I came out, this is what I found:

Happy kids who had cleaned up the whole family room without being asked! What good kids!

Then when they asked me to make them lunch, my first thought was, "Great, here goes the spotless kitchen and the "freshly-Pledged" table." But then I thought about part of the talk that President Monson gave in conference about finding joy in the journey. I'll just give the quote since I could never do it justice:

'If you are still in the process of raising children, be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled will disappear all too soon and that you will - to your surprise - miss them profoundly.'

I still get discouraged when I work so hard and things get messed up, but I know that this time will go fast and that I WILL miss all of it someday. I need to be better at "finding joy in my journey." Maybe that is why I take pictures of a clean house - because it doesn't last long. You know the phrase "Take a picture, it will last longer?" Totally true when it comes to a clean house. But I also had to take pictures of the messes because that is all part of having kids, and the fact that they pitched in and cleaned up without being asked makes me smile.

I love my kiddos to pieces and will be so sad when they are grown up and I don't have their little fingerprints all over the house and their dirty laundry to do and their artwork all over the fridge... But I hope that when that day comes I can say that I enjoyed my kids.

But this all brings me back to the title. I think I need a maid on cleaning day to do that deep cleaning so that I can play with the kids more, don't ya think?:)