Housekeeping

As any regular reader of this blog knows, I am the world’s worst housekeeper. Alright, that may be a slight exaggeration, but I’m surely in the bottom 10. I thought I had come to a comfortable acceptance with myself over this. I told myself cute things like “When you’re homeschooling, you can either have brilliant children or a clean house, but you can’t have both.” Good, huh? So here I was, just doing enough to keep the health department at bay, and then my vacuum cleaner bit the dust.

I hated my vacuum cleaner. It nagged me. It had this “helpful” dirt sensor light that turned green when your floor was clean. Some days it took a long time to turn green.

I’m not generally a fan of appliances that nag me. In fact, it annoys the crap out of me. The microwave dings every minute between the time it’s done and I open the door. (I hear you! Sometimes I’m just too busy doing other stuff. Like eating my bon-bons and watching my stories. Hang on a second will ya?) Or my new car that tells me when passengers unbuckle themselves. (If the 8 yr old and the 6 yr old want to have a wrestling match in the third row, how is that any of the car’s beeswax?) And then there was the vacuum….with the light that taunted me.

It died. We have five children and a lot of carpet. Living even a day without a vacuum is not an option. Have I mentioned my husband’s OCD and germ phobia? (Yes, he’s germ phobic and I’m not a great housekeeper. It must be love that keeps us together. No, I haven’t considered changing my ways. If it bothers him so much then he can clean it. Who are you, my mother?)

I got a Bissell Healthy Home machine. This puppy right here.
See the Healthy right in the title? That’s got to help even a poor slob like me.

Now I can see that the nagging one was right. My house is disgusting. I emptied 3 canisters of dirt and dust from the 3 year old’s bedroom, and 4 from mine. I have moved every bit of furniture in the house and vacuumed obsessively under it. I don’t know about the house being healthier, but I will be after all this activity. It doesn’t even need a dirt sensor light to make me feel bad. The walk of shame from my house to the outside garbage can with a canister of debris 5 times in one hour is punishment enough.

I, the Mom, swear on a stack of Mister Clean Magic Erasers to never let my house get to this point again…and failing that, to find the person who invented dust and kick his….well, you get the general idea.