Cleaning? What’s That?

If you go to the house of someone who has just had a baby, odds are the house will be a disaster. If it isn’t, it’s because the new parents either can afford a cleaning service, or have enslaved one of their mothers, who is too busy being thrilled that she is finally a grandmother to care that she is being forced to cook and clean around the clock.

Before spawning, I never understood why it was so difficult to cook, clean, or take a shower when you had kids, but this is what is boils down to: kids demand attention. A LOT of attention. Trying to get anything done when they are around is darn near impossible because something always goes wrong. They spit up and need a change of clothing. They have a poopy diaper blowout and need a bath. They are hungry and need to be fed. They break an antique vase and need to be removed from the scene. The list goes on and on.

And if you think it gets better when they become toddlers and more self-sufficient, think again. Now they simply want constant companionship and there is no such thing as a moment’s peace (if your house suddenly gets very quiet, you can bet your bottom dollar that your toddler is up to no good).

Ginger is basically a repeating loop of “why” questions, and she doesn’t always like the answers she gets, so she just keeps asking. I have had more than a few moments where I’ve lost my cool and yelled at her to “PLEASE BE QUIET SO MOMMY CAN THINK FOR A MINUTE.” The shock effect of this usually lasts about 7 seconds before Ginger quietly says, “Why you need to think for a minute, Mommy?”

So then there’s naptime when I should be able to scrub my house from top to bottom, right? HA!

First of all, I’m so darn happy to have some peace and quiet, and so exhausted from chasing and tending to the kids all morning that the motivation to clean is just not there. I’d rather eat, read, or watch some trashy reality TV that I would never dare turn on when the kids are around.

Second, cleaning makes noise in ways you don’t realize until you try to do it during naptime. You learn this lesson when you trigger the worst sound a human being can possibly hear: a crying baby who has woken up from his nap prematurely. Visit any mommy chat board and you will quickly learn that early risers (or worse, the non-nappers) drive many moms to thoughts of running away forever and never coming back.

So no vacuums or dustbusters or garbage disposals can be run, no toilets flushed, no showers turned on (it’s amazing how loud your water pipes suddenly become after you give birth. Do plumbers do that on purpose?).

So with this background in mind, I give you today’s tale of Housewife Failure: recently I had a doctor’s appointment and was chit-chatting with the doc about house stuff, when the conversation turned to vacuum cleaners (don’t ask, I don’t know how we got there, either). I mentioned an old model that I no longer use and the doctor asked where I was keeping it. I told her it was probably in my basement, although I couldn’t swear to that. Then she asked if I used it to vacuum my basement.

Um, what?

Do people actually vacuum their basements?

I mean, I know they are dirty and dusty, and bug carcasses litter the floor, but that’s what a basement is supposed to look like, right?

Honestly, I always kind of assumed that you left the basement alone and eventually all that yuckiness would just go away. Maybe the Basement Fairy would show up one night and clean it for me. Or maybe a tornado would sweep through the basement and suck all the dead bugs out. Or maybe we’d move and the buyers would never look in the basement and I’d leave the state before having to confront the horror down there. I dunno, but I guess we’ll add my basement to the list of things that I don’t clean.