Spin Cycle: Lessons in a Messy House

Standing at the sink, trying to figure out how to fit the day's 32^nd cup into the dishwasher rack that holds a maximum of 30, my almost 4 year old runs into the kitchen with legitimate excitement, wiggles his little orange and gray toes and announces “I found matching socks!”.  There’s crumbs and dirt (so much dirt, that is in no doubt related to the dirt/mud/ice/snow driveway we have right now), there are piles of tractor pictures on every flat surface, along with a baseball hat, mate-less glove, a half eaten granola bar.  Eeew.  And that is just the kitchen.

It’s not that I’m a bad housekeeper (I tell myself).  In fact, before we had kids, even in college, our house was always clean, my husband never had to wear damp from the dryer pants to work and the kitchen sinks were empty – even though we didn’t have a dishwasher.  How did it all go downhill so quickly?

I don’t think its laziness.  From about 6:20AM to 10PM I’m always doing something: the off-to-school rush, the banishment to my office for hours, after school chaos, dinner, homework, practice spelling and vocab, bath time, read stories to all four of them, tuck them in, make lunches for tomorrow, chase the kids out of the bathroom and back to bed, check out and/or clean up whatever science experiment they started in there, then finally sit down on the couch about 8:30PM and plan my work for the next day, make a grocery/birthday/Christmas/whatever is coming list until I put down my pen at 10PM for the news.

I wonder if the house would be neater if there were more hours in the day to get stuff done, then I realize that would just give the kids more time to mess it up.  So, while the “Mom Scouts” are off earning their badges in sock-matching, sink scrubbing and crumbless carpets, I decided to do what I do best, spin.

In my day job as a marketing professional I get to frame products and services to give them a purpose, and make them sound appealing or desirable.

My “spinspiration” came during parenting time at my youngest’s ECFE class, we were discussing the building blocks of math, and one of the first math skills kids learn is to group, match and organize items, recognizing similarities and differences.  How could I deny this learning opportunity to my offspring by matching their socks for them? And, what other important lessons can be learned from my shotty housekeeping.

So far, I've found a few lessons in my messy house:

1.  Perhaps when the 5-year-old can’t find clean pants because he put his clean clothes on his bed, instead of in his drawers, like I asked him to, asking him where he put them results in critical thinking and recognizing sequence of events.

2.  Maybe when there are only 4 forks left in the drawer because I haven’t yet emptied the clean dishwasher, figuring out how many are needed and finding them in the dishwasher is subtraction and addition.

3.  The investigation into the spilled juice that has mostly glued my foot to the floor is probably a good attempt at storytelling or persuasive speech, and cleaning it up anyway, is a good lesson in personal responsibility.

4.  The thin coating of dust on everything is most likely a better, organic immune system booster than vitamin C, I think I read… somewhere.

5.  The little pebbles that find their way in the house in the grooves of their boots serve to toughen our tootsies, no soft soled sissies here.

6.  Hurtling the heap of winter outdoor clothes that never seem to stay on their hooks most definitely improves agility and balance.

7.  Finding their homework in the tower of paper that arrives home in three backpacks each Friday afternoon teaches determination.

8.  When there’s no cups left for that 3^rd or 4^th glass of milk or juice in a day, Finding and rinsing the cup you used for drinks 1, 2 or 3 seems like problem solving to me.

9.  The mom’s fed up with all the toys everywhere and you have 10 seconds to get it in your room countdown is a daily lesson on how to count backwards.

10.  Avoiding discipline for the latest act of destruction: coloring on the wall, gum in the carpet, is a good start for Law Concepts 101 – pleading the fifth, deflecting blame, or pleading mom’s insanity (But Mom, it’s been there forever!).

11.  The long lived leftovers in the fridge, a science experiment in progress and quite possibly the next best thing since penicillin.

I’m still trying to spin a few things, like the clumps of SpongeBob toothpaste that magically appear on the bathroom sink daily and the tiny scraps of paper that look like a notebook had its own surprise party and didn’t clean up. 

I can tell myself how nicely the sandy dirt from the backdoor that trails into our kitchen exfoliates my feet while I cook dinner, but really the spin is just a final last attempt to not feel rotten about having a house that could probably apply for national disaster assistance 350 out of 365 days a year.  Trying to keep a clean house with 4 kids under 10 is a challenge, and when you’re not passionate about spotless windows and clutter-free counters, it’s nearly impossible. 

So I’ll try not to be jealous and maybe a tiny bit ashamed when the Mom Scouts parade around with their sashes full of super mom/housekeeper badges.  Instead, I’ll focus on my achievements in other motherly things. 

For example, my kids eat well, the freezer has just meat, veggies and a tub or two of ice cream, one may be coffee flavored (in other words, mine).  But, there are no frozen pizzas or chicken nuggets, if we have those I make them from scratch, that ought to count for something.  And probably is the reason I have so many dishes to do all the time. 

I write a note for their lunch boxes each day, I read to them all each night, really look at their pictures, even if it’s the 40^th green tractor of the day.  I remember, most of the time, to thank them or tell them about a good thing they did that day.  We talk about what’s on the evening news, even if it’s a bit scary, because I think, as they grow the more “reality” they know the better and being the one to explain the scary and strange things to them is important to me.

I demand their best, congratulate them on the best tries and help them understand their failures, so they can get better the next time. I come up with fun ways to remember their spelling words, for my 2^nd grade boy, that almost always includes potty humor.  I try to make their birthdays special by drawing their decorations, designing and constructing cakes and making the food they want.  I discipline them. I show them I love them.  And, I think, I hope, that when they’re grown, they’ll remember all that more than the daily search for matching socks and the towers of pieces of papers in our messy house.