Should I Be Proud or Ashamed of Myself?

I do not keep my house as clean as my mom keeps her house. I do not keep my house as clean as my mother-in-law keeps her house. I do keep my house picked up; however, I rarely deep clean. Ryan and I have an understanding. Neither of us want to be embarrassed if friends or relatives happen to pop in. So, we hide our clutter in closets and corners and force ourselves to deep clean about once a year...you know, the kind of cleaning that makes a person sweat. Moving furniture, wiping down floors and walls, doing 13 tons of laundry and actually folding and putting it away. And every time I succumb to this kind of personal torture, I wonder: How on earth can people do this crap regularly?

Tomorrow is our big third of July party. This is the fourth year we've hosted this shin-dig and our family looks forward to it every year. This is the first time I've been smart enough to take a week off from work to spend some quality time with the kiddos and fit in some pre-party cleaning.

I was actually wiping down our wood floors today (after my mid-morning nap of course!) and I couldn't believe the amount of dirt and grime I collected. My routine went like this: vacuum, clorox wipes, disgusted look, gag reflux, wet rag, repeat. I kept thinking about all of my mom friends who will be visiting our house tomorrow with their little cruiser babies. Every time I felt like throwing in the towel, I would imagine one of their little darlings pulling my hair out of their mouth...a rare treat that they found in a special spot on my floor.

I was pretty proud of the work I had done when something dawned on me: Jaycee, my almost nine-month old, has been crawling and scooting on this same floor for the past two months. My pride turned to shame. Why is it that I am obsessed with cleaning floors for my friends' children but am perfectly OK with letting my own brood swiffer up the same surfaces with their tongues, bellies, and backsides?

No matter what the motivation, I am still glad this place is clean now. On a side note, I asked Austin, my five-year old, to help vacuum and all I could hear from the other room were these sounds: vvrrrroooom, ffuuttt, giggle giggle, tiny wimper, repeat. When I turned around the corner, I saw this scene. Jaycee, the human swiffer, is now as shiny as our wood floors.