Children force your hand on a lot of choices. Sleep, or getting up with the baby? Piercing wails generally make that decision for you. Finish your conversation, or take the knife away from the 2-year old? well, evidemment, as the French would say! (I think that's their fancy word for "duh.") And, the most common, everyday choice that I have to make: what - or who- gets to be clean?
Personally, I like being clean. Personal-hygiene wise. I feel icky if I don't have a shower. (I think my husband also likes for me to bathe...) However, those 10-15 minutes every day come at a very high cost. The children see this unsupervised time as a personal challenge to destroy as much of the house as they possibly can in the allotted time, before Mama can emerge and stop them. Essentially, either I can be clean, or my house can.
This morning, for example, I emerged from my shower to find my son, his blanket, and the couch all coated with a thick layer of peanut butter. Believe it or not, this was actually one of the most tame cleanups I've experienced lately. There was none on the carpet, thank goodness! Son to the shower, blanket to the washing machine, and wet rag applied to the couch...fairly easy, relatively speaking! Unlike the day when I had to steam clean the entire house...
So the decision remains, each day: do I want to be clean, or to have a clean house? Clearly both is not an option. Maybe someday. For now, I usually chose personal hygiene, for the sake of my own dignity and to save the senses of those around me. ;-)
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