The Futility of Cleaning

I don’t consider myself to be a neat freak my any stretch of the imagination. But I do like things in order and no disgusting. However, it seems as of late that reaching my minimal level of acceptable cleanliness is getting harder and harder to obtain. Now, I’m a list maker and checking things off my list gives me a great joy, however I find it almost useless to put certain tasks on my list. Since by the time you can cross it off it time to add it to the list again.

For instance, cleaning the kitchen. Between 3 meals a day, Joe’s coffee corner, Jude’s messes and the ever growing pile of recyclables yet to be taken outside I find it almost impossible to keep our tiny kitchen clean. You would think with a kitchen the size of mine, where you can reach the fridge, sink, stove and any cabinet without moving an inch, it’d be easy to keep tidy. But alas, I think it’s just the opposite. Maybe it’s a ratio thing. I would still have the same size mess but in a kitchen twice the size it wouldn’t look so bad!?!?!

During the week I suck it up and try to be the good housewife and mother. Attending to the daily duties while Joe works hard to pay for everything. But when the weekend rolls around I lose all motivation. On any given weekday I can have most of my tidying up done before noon but there’s something that sucks all of my motivation out of me on the weekends… I’ve grown to call it Joe. They save having 2 people cleaning is more than twice as effective… somehow. But I beg to differ. Having 2 people cleaning usually mean one of us is really just making sure Jude doesn’t get into trouble and/or making a bigger mess in another room.

The Solution: While I’ve contemplated eliminating cleaning all together from my life I don’t think I could handle the outcome. So I guess the only feasible solution would be to suck it up.

So back to cleaning I go.