With Kids, a ‘Clean’ Home Is Impossible
So why do I still feel guilty?
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“You know,” I said to my husband the other day, as our youngest was mashing banana into the couch and our oldest was ripping paper into strips and letting them flutter to his feet, “people shouldn’t be so judgy about how clean other people’s homes are. Especially if they have kids.”
“I don’t think they are,” he said, placing his bowl of cereal milk on the edge of the sink and not in the goddamn dishwasher, which is a single step away. “I’m pretty sure anyone who has kids knows how hard it is to keep a house clean.” Then he wandered into the living room and was swallowed by the dust gryphon that lives there, may he rest in peace.
Maybe he’s right, and maybe the actual judgment is being handed down by that menacing trifecta of Me, Myself, and I. I live in a house that’s more than 100 years old with two children and two pit bulls. (And have I mentioned that I’m four weeks away from giving birth to my third? I haven’t? We must not have spoken in the past five seconds then, as that is the frequency with which I mention it.) There isn’t a single place in my house that I can look without cringing about how it could be cleaner. My refrigerator doors are a graveyard of fingerprints and unidentified blobs; my floors are basically like walking on a neglected outdoor patio — dirt, dog hair, food, twigs, leaves, dead woodland animals; even the occasional lovely stream of light coming in through my windows only serves to illuminate the tornadoes of dust whirling in the very air my family breathes. I make the beds every day, and I stay on top of the laundry and the dishes and the clutter, and after all of that is done, it’s time to start all over again because my youngest son goes through four outfits a day and my oldest likes to mine various junk drawers for crap that I hid in there because I wasn’t ready to throw it out but also never wanted to see it again. (Oh cool! He’s discovered my collection of race medals! That’ll teach him about how hard work and perseverance can lead to UGH DID HE LEAVE THIS PILE OF MEDALS BEHIND THE TOILET AND WHY ARE THEY WET THAT’S IT I’M THROWING THEM AWAY or okay I’ll move them to a different junk drawer JESUS CHRIST HE FOUND THEM AGAIN but at least it’s better than when he found a dozen spools of thread and made “booby traps” with them…
