Keeping a Spotless House… Yeah Right!
So I’m moving house, and today the leasing agent came by take photographs. I cleaned, and moved junk out of sight, and took the diaper pail down to the basement, and put all the toys away while Toddler was sleeping. Washed all the dishes and put them away, hid the toys that live on the confiscated shelf (mostly small chokable objects that Toddler tried to feed to Daycare Baby, and large hard objects Toddler tried to whack Daycare Baby with), cleaned the bath and washed the floors.
Don’t houses look different when you can see the floors? As a mom of one of my own and up to two more of other peoples, it’s rare that I get to see much of the flooring.
Anyway, the agent is coming at 10. Toddler gets up ay 7am and Daycare Baby arrives at 9. All I have to do is keep the house tidy for three hours. Hard?
Usually my house is fairly clean and fairly untidy. Not revolting by any means, there’s usually lots of toys scattered around and I don’t usually make the bed and all the dishes live in the drainer after they are washed. And there is probably a sippy cup under the couch. And a couple of my coffee cups that I got distracted and didn’t take back to the kitchen. Pretty normal, yes? (If you tell me “Normal” actually means spotless and gleaming and only one toy out at a time, I’m not going to listen.)
Toddler doesn’t care to understand “Tidy” and Daycare Baby certainly doesn’t, and she’s in a particularly intense getting-things-out stage. I have to feed him, feed her second breakfast, run around after him because he won’t sit still to eat, then run around some more picking up all the things they get out and then abandon. And the socks they take off, and the pillows they throw on the floor, and all the other baby mess that I don’t really notice on a day-to-day basis because I normally ignore anything that’s not going to stain the floor until the end of the day and do one big pick up. It’s much more efficient.
So by 10 I’m exhausted and so relived to see the agent. She comes in, looks about, takes one photo then drops her camera on the floor. It breaks. Curses curses curses.
This reveals two reasons why being too tidy is not good. If I hadn’t tidied, the odds would have been excellent that the camera’s fall would have been cushioned by a squashy block or a dolly or a heap of dirty toddler socks. And now I have to keep the place tidy long enough for me to find the battery charger for my camera so I can take photos. Where did I tidy that away to?
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