Cleaning Day
Did you grow up in a house that was completely spotless all the time? I did. Seriously. You might think that I just don’t remember properly or that I’m overblowing the amount of time I had to help clean:) But I’m not. Once a week we had “cleaning day”. I hated the day, but loved the feeling when we were done! My mom was such a clean freak - and I mean that in the most loving way possible:) - that we opened all the windows, put all the comforters outside to air out, vacuumed all the baseboards and did all the other regular cleaning you might expect every single week. No matter the weather. Some days it was pretty cold:) But it always smelled so good.
Over the years I have tried to get away from doing all the cleaning on one day. I’ve tried splitting the house up over the week, bathroom on Monday, kitchen on Tuesday, etc., but I cannot get away from loving the feeling of the whole house cleaned from top to bottom on one day. So, in one of many ways, I have become just like my mother:) Well, ok, only in the fact that I clean one day a week. Please do not think that my level of cleanliness even comes close to my mother. I often think of how much cleaner she would have this place. And because I’ve often thought this, I have a wonderful list of really valid excuses! Let me share just a few:)
For a while it was because I had little kids. I can’t remember when I was a little kid, so I’m sure my mom had bad days (or months) then too!
Then I got sick and had to learn how to live with chronic pain. Very valid, yes? I thought so:)
Lastly, now that my kids are old enough to help, I moved to an 100 acres where the seasons are, snow, mud, grass, mud. Seriously.
But I still clean once a week. And my kids complain as much as I did. Emma asked me today why we have to clean when there wasn’t even someone coming over after. I told her that I didn’t want to live in filth. She replied, “Why not? I’m fine with it!”:)
Enter in my Pastor’s wife, Patti. She’s really more of a second mom since I practically grew up at her house too. When there’s two homeschooling families that go to the same church, have kids the same age and live within walking distance, the lines between friends and family start to get blurred. And yes, you guessed it, Patti was just as clean as my mom. Are you starting to understand my complex?? I comfort myself with the fact that I can cook very well:) Although my kitchen is always a disaster after!
Patti also had a cleaning day. I tried to avoid that one, but I remember being there for several of them:) It didn’t matter if you were a Wood or a Vink, if you got caught at either one of the houses on cleaning day, you cleaned! Around five years ago, Patti started talking about a product called ENJO. I try not to jump on bandwagons, so I ignored it and just waited. Well, five years later and Patti still uses nothing else to clean her house. No chemicals is always awesome and time saving is too. So off to a party I went. I had money in hand since Patti telling me how easy it was to do windows had already sold me! Today was my second cleaning day with my ENJO and I have to say, I’m loving them. I feel like I can get so much more accomplished on cleaning day! And by that I mean, I can make the kids do so much more since there are no chemicals:) The first time Arianna used the duster she came in the kitchen and said, “Mom! This glove is like a dream!”. Is it bad that my nine year old can validly compare several ways to dust?? I even dusted a few baseboards today and I felt more connected to my mother just in the dusting:) I’m looking forward to trying out the windows soon. I was going to say on Thursday, since that’s my plan, but who knows. Spring cleaning and I have never gotten along that well!
Now if only they made one of those magic gloves for ironing!
But in all seriousness, I’m thankful for my mom teaching me how to clean. She taught me so many more important things than that too, but I always think of her on cleaning days:)
One of my favourite pics of my mom:)