My Home Is Gross...

I like to consider myself a clean person.
I may not necessarily be tidy, but I do like to think of myself as clean.

For some reason I've always struggled to maintain tidiness. Admittedly, it's definitely progressed in difficulty since becoming a mother to two small people. But even growing up, I'd always have the messier bedroom out of myself and my siblings. However I love it when everything has it's place and is neat and tidy. So every few weeks I would burst into life and clean everything and make it all fresh and tidy. I loved those days.
However the tidiness was always short lived. In the coming days my beloved childhood possessions would find themselves on the floor... or under my bed. Much to my dad's dismay I might add.

My life is much the same now really. Every so often the cogs will click and I'll shout "THAT'S ENOUGH" and proceed to tidy Jacob's toys into alphabetical order, or some other completely ridiculous idea that's impossible to maintain. And sit back and be all proud of myself because I've achieved so much that day and I'm so sure that I can keep on top of it. Other parents manage it right?

Well not me! Pretty much the next day, there's Weetabix smeared into the carpet, something unidentifiable drying into a nice crust on the sofa and lord knows what that smell is...
I get into a huge strop over it all, sometimes I even cry.. What's the point in spending my whole day making things beautiful when this is how it ends up?

Well...

Recently I've not had that burst of enthusiasm. At all. Not even a little bit.
I've barely done the absolute minimum to ensure a reduced danger of death from various poisonings...
I knew I wasn't doing the best job but I sort of pushed it to the back of my mind and pretended that it really wasn't that bad.
This week though my dad came over. Now don't get me wrong, my dad is totally the least judgmental person on the planet. He's generally a laid back bloke really. He came over to watch the kids for an hour while I went to an appointment. I realised I had an issue when instead of thinking 'oh I hope Jacob is behaving' I was thinking 'Oh I hope dad doesn't think anything sinister of that Weetabix stain on the wall' and 'I hope he doesn't stumble across that pile of dirty laundry I can't remember what I did with'.

When I got back, dad was happily sat on the sofa with a sleeping Robyn in his arms and Jacob sat next to him reading a book. He refused to accept my bombardment of apologies for the mess.

That evening we all spent time at dad's and had dinner and it was absolutely lovely. The thing that stood in my mind the most was that it was so clean. I mean, don't get me wrong, my parents don't have two children under two and a Jamie to clean up after so I'm not putting them on a pedestal too much here. But when I came home to have a look around, I found my home to be just plain grubby.

There were drips of something down the fridge that were only too easy too ignore... The light switches were oddly sticky and there was a faint smell of nappies lingering about the place.

It was noticing these things that I had come to ignore, that re-instated my ambition to be a clean person, if not 100% tidy, I wanted to maintain my own self image of a clean mum.

I didn't even intend to start cleaning today. It wasn't something I woke up and decided to do. But after 'nipping' to Homebase for drain cleaner, and coming out with £25 worth of cleaning products I decided to set to work.

I cleaned down all the tiles in the bathroom and bleached the grouting. Descaling the shower head at the same time. (Which I have been meaning to do for about a century) Whilst I had the descaler I thought it would be silly to not do the kettle and the iron at the same time. So there were another two jobs jobbed.
I went on like that for most of the day really. I can honestly say I am pleased with my work, These are things that just go on the 'the list' never to be done.

Having completed half that list in a day I've come to realise there's not much need to 'do it tomorrow' as tomorrow never comes!

;)