Dusting, Cleaning, Vacuuming, Putting Away

Does anyone know the poem that is written from a mom to her family that says something about "if it's dirty, clean it, if it's full, empty it, if it's hungry feed it"? When I was growing up before I moved to BC, my step dad DRILLED into me that if you walk into a room and see something that needs doing, you do it if you are capable. The thing is that when you are a tween or teenager you can find every loophole for the word capable...trust me on this Hope knows them all...I digress. Today it occured to me that while more difficult, challenging and/or tough to accomplish, housework or in this case the lack of doing so, boils down to willingness or unwillingness because I am ALWAYS capable of doing what needs doing. This is simply a sugar coated version of what the bible would make into, laziness.

In my case, my willingness to do the housework boils down to factors like, attitude, self control and discipline, patience and the newest enlightening thought...timing. My brain sometimes has a chemical imbalance and sometimes overcomes my hearts desire to have a clean, tidy and organized home. But being a recovering lazy person, and slowly but surely, working out my addictions, I have learned to somewhat overcome my sheer lack of willingness to do the housework and force myself to look at the circumstances.

Parenting in a messy home is so tough because there is a constant, "don't touch that, no that's not yours, that's dangerous" dialoge but changing the environment by making it tidy and clean, turns the conversation to, "please put that away, want to draw a picture, let's play a game". Also, it makes it nicer to parent the older ones by giving them the model to follow hopefully giving them the tools to overcome their own struggles of laziness and become individuals who can walk into a room and complete a task because it needs doing and not just because they have been asked, want something or someone is watching.

So all that said, today, after my blog about timing, I tried to call my doctor and make an appointment for the week...there are no appointments until next Tuesday. Today my doctor is on call so I thought that it would be a good day to have her, but givent that I just gave up on all that misery and poor me attitude, I had to take a deep breath. I called Denise (or maybe she called me) and said, "you talk, I am too upset and dont want to think about myself." I did get to vent, thankfully, but at the very least I was trying to get my eyes off of myself. You know what that did? It propelled me into a frenzy of selfless acts of housewife work.

I am pretty proud of what I accomplished today; I am sitting in a tidy, dusted, vacuumed, living room (except for the table FULL of stuff that the other people who live here need to deal with), five hot spots are cleared , my little boys have all their clothes either in the their dirty bin or folded and put away in their closet, my big boys have clean underwear, socks, shirts and pants in their armoir, all the summer clothes are in a bin ready for next year (including swimming shorts in ABUNDANCE), the lined closet is stocked, dinner got made, the bathrooms upstairs are clean, I tidied the carport (which included sorting some recycling) and the twins are asleep. OH! And I made banana muffins. I actually feel good about sitting down but also that I was on my feet for so long because gravity does work with babies.

I am smiling for the first time in a few days and don't feel like whining about my lack of a baby in my arms (although gosh I want to see her!!!) and while the dishwasher is running and I think of a shower or maybe another load of laundry, I have a strange sence of pride welling up...but the list is interestingly getting longer...tomorrow I am going to tackle my bedroom AGAIN (I live with the handsome but messy guy) oh well I just decided to do it now...I will get him to move the furniture, maybe....

Thanks for listening, love you all!