The Queen's Rambles

I had a few people ask me about my new cleaning system, which means I probably gave the entirely wrong impression. It’s not that I have a clean home. It’s that my common areas are no longer pig styes. My house isn’t dirty, but I am a clutter bug. My bedroom and Elsa’s bedroom are complete embarrassments. I am not freaked out about this because we had a home organizer talk to our MOMS Club last year and she said it is impossible to organize if you don’t have a junk room. Somehow those two bedrooms have become our junk rooms, which works because we only use our bedrooms for sleeping. I would love to have a bigger house just so we could have a dedicated junk room.

Anyhow, on to the system! It is not a system, so much as it’s a total mind shift.

My mom went back to work when I was in fourth grade. My mom had a very critical mother who abhorred anything she viewed as lazy. These two factors combined to make housekeeping a living hell in my childhood home. My mom was insane about the housekeeping and the children were never allowed to help because we just got in the way. That was a-ok with me. I had friends who had chores and felt so sorry for them!

But. . . .

That meant I grew up, became an adult, and had no idea how to cook or clean. Not exactly a parenting win in the long run.

My mom cleaned by getting up super early on Saturday and spending the whole day Cleaning! All! The! Things! Saturday was a day of yelling and screaming and maybe a movie if she managed to steal enough money from my drunken dad’s wallet the night before. She still doesn’t understand how I have money to do anything since Mike doesn’t get falling down drunk every weekend, giving me an opportunity to steal the next week’s spending money.

So I’ve always had this aversion to getting up early on a Saturday and doing all my chores. I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination and I like to laze around on Saturdays. Why do I want to mar the fun day with the most un-fun stuff? Makes no sense.

A few months ago I saw a little cleaning schedule on Pintrest. It completely blew my mind! The details of the actually crafty part are sketchy, but the important point was that the lady broke all the cleaning tasks down and spread them out over the week. As she did a chore she pulled it off her magnetic to-do list.

Doing tasks all through the week? On my own schedule???? I can do that?

Yes, I’m 38 years old and had no idea I could spread the tasks out instead of doing them in one big, exhausting spurt of hateful resentment. Doh!

Around that same time I read a blog by a lady who was using some kind of heart rate monitor/calorie counter and she noticed that she burned more calories cleaning at home than doing cardio at the gym. There’s a sweet spot in regards to your heart rate and fat burning, which is well below the heart rate for cardio. Cleaning finds this sweet spot because you are moving around, but not running.

These days I have a sort of flex schedule set up: Mondays and Thursdays are laundry. Tuesdays are bathrooms. Wednesdays are the kitchen. Fridays are whatever needs to be done. Picking up clutter and vacuuming the living room are daily. Mike does a nightly cleaning of the kitchen and he takes care of the basement.

On days I miss a gym workout, I set the timer for an hour and do a strenuous household project (baseboards, windows, painting, something. . . ). I turn up my radio or put in my iPod to make it go faster. My next step is to get a heart rate monitor thingee. Any suggestions? My friend likes her FitBit so maybe that’s what I will get.

I do all this work at 2 pm. I am not meant to be a morning person. I resent being pulled out of my morning stupor and being expected to get straight to work.

Not that this system is perfect. I painted on Tuesday instead of doing the bathrooms, then on Friday I made a complete meal for a family who lost their house in a fire. Somehow making a meal for someone else is much more exhausting than making a meal for ourselves, so I never got to the bathrooms this week. And, like I said, if you looked in my bedroom you would see that this whole thing is a complete sham that barely keeps us from living in a hovel.

I honestly don’t know how families without a stay-at-home parent or nanny or housekeeper do it. I read a blog yesterday that stated every family needs a carer, and I agree 100%. Even when both kids are in school, how will I have time to work without completely shattering the semi-idyllic life we lead? I don’t want to pick my kids up from aftercare, rush home, eat a hurried dinner (probably take-out or frozen) while trying to get homework done. Send the kids to bed. Start all over again. Clean! All! The! Things! on Saturday. And oh yeah, grocery shopping, doctor’s appointments, special school projects, keeping up with friendships. . .

That lifestyle doesn’t appeal to me at all if it is not 100% necessary. Then I feel like a loser for having no career ambitions, but no job I’ve ever had has given me the satisfaction that mothering gives me. It’s enough to make me want to have another baby just so I don’t have to jump back into the working world. Which is INSANE. I want to start to sleep sometime in the five-ten years. Did I mention Elsa was up all night puking? I should have cleaned all the bathrooms today to prepare for the inevitable night on the bathroom floor that I’m sure to endure in the next couple of days.