Keep the House Clean or Sanitary, You Choose.

Last post I wrote about a book I thought about writing when I was younger and taking care of a young but large family.  My second chapter was titled,  "Keep the house clean or sanitary, you choose."  Here is what remains of the effort:

My first five children all came within a couple of years of each other, then there was a silent break and we got two more—but that’s another story.

The fun thing about having them all quickly is they were usually excited to do the same project.  There was a time when the youngest was old enough to enjoy the activity and the oldest was young enough to really have fun with all the sibs.  I called those the golden family years.  I loved going places together, because they were all excited and they all helped each other and I felt like the Pied Piper, happily leading this group of children off to fun times. 

The hard thing about having children close together was the mess.  I’m talking about the place where we ate, slept and played—our house.  It was impossible for me to keep it all organized and picked up, let alone the wash done and the meals on time.  Cleaning windows was just a dream. I never really did get the hang of it.  I don’t really know what I expected but I thought I could have done better. 

There were times when I would dig in and spend a few concentrated hours in a bedroom, deliberately and mechanically sorting each Lego and bristle block, marble and hot wheels car, until all were placed in their labeled and color-coded bin on the closet shelves, meanwhile ignoring all the racket and/or suspect silence in the rest of the house.   I would accomplish something—for me, it was a place well organized in my mind’s eye when I walked out of the room, and for the kids it was a clean slate to begin new play.  Within moments, the tidiness would be discovered and out it all came, for a rousing game of “garbage man” or else a new and improved project to be abandoned once again when it was meal time. 

There were some things that drove me wild—like honey or syrup on the counter tops or a toilet seat that needed cleaning. I would drop everything to take care of those problems, but inevitably something else would suffer.  I had a patient husband who didn’t complain very often about moving the Rocky Mountains disguised in unfolded clean clothes off the bed at night so he could go to sleep, or never blamed me when he had to step through the wild toy night-party in the hall on his way to the bathroom, even when it meant he would probably be prying a Lego or two out from between the toes.  His kind patience with our messy family touched me and I tried to think of what I could do to make it better for him.

One day I heard the car drive up and I knew he was home.  The table was set for dinner, and there was actually food ready to eat, but the kitchen floor was a mess.  Several different kinds of cereal were concentrated under the table; bread crusts and cracker crumbs paved the rest of the floor between the stacking rings and super balls randomly rolling across the floor.  I had sudden inspiration and I grabbed the broom and quickly removed the debris from the path he would walk to the table and where his feet would rest while eating dinner.  It was great, and it worked.  No tell-tale crunching underfoot!  I felt very successful that night, and often repeated the same quick clean up just before he walked in the door.