Good enough housekeeping

I spent Saturday morning cleaning my house. Not a deep clean, but a good-enough clean. If you would have rung my doorbell, I would have invited you in.

And if you would have rung my doorbell Tuesday morning, I would have smiled at such a pleasant surprise and stepped out on the porch to talk to you, using my large body to tactfully, yet tactically block any view you might catch of the interior. Not because I don’t like you or want you to come in; I just don’t want you to see my dirty house.

The laundry-and-cat-hair combo.

 

Rethinking every dish I ever washed.

 

Why so bad by Tuesday? Racks of air-drying laundry that was washed Monday and hadn’t been put away. A basketful of clean clothes. Dog hair. Cat hair. People hair. Dust. There was a smell (there’s always a smell). Dog nose smears on the front window and back door glass. Cat snot (a sudden sneeze splayed across my computer keyboard). Muddy tracks on the carpet. Some sort of mystery spots on the armchair. And more.

Am currently drafting apology note to husband regarding recent accusations made against him concerning level of cleanliness of shower drain. In my defense, it is worth noting that he and the cat have similar hair color.

 

So much more.

Wet feet? No, not me. Now please let me in.

 

We are a busy family. My hubs and I work full time. My son stays super busy with music and martial arts (and thus so do we), plus homework (we do not help with that; he’s smarter than we are and he knows it). We all volunteer at church and in the community. Plus, we make time to do relaxing stuff during the week. We walk the dog, watch TV, read real books with paper pages (just me and the kid), play video games (just the kid), and go to the gym (everybody but me).

 

Um, yes, that would be the dog on my side of the bed.

 

And when we do clean house, we do it as a family. We pretty much split the work three ways and dive in. Raising a useful male? Why yes, I am.

Our house is small. We like it that way because it’s affordable and uses fewer resources. But it can be a challenge to keep picked up and clean. The mess is always right … there ... because there’s no other place to hide it. We have several pets. They bring lots of smears, spots and smells, but also lots of love and joy. 

Pets are not allowed on the furniture.

 

Seriously. Not allowed on furniture.

 

 And to be honest, we just don’t want to spend our precious time as a family with a vacuum in hand.

There’s a balance between having a comfortable, welcoming home and obsessing over every little thing. So sometimes when friends drop by, there are tumbleweeds of animal hair rolling across the dusty prairie of our kitchen floor. And the cats’ litter boxes are two days past nostril-hair-burning.

But I can honestly say ours is a happy home. Messy… but happy