Sloppy Saturdays

So here it is Saturday, and a Saturday to myself too! Every two weeks I get one of these gems and fill it with the things I love the best about having some me time. I sleep in, with all three of the furry ones on the bed with me. I have coffee for breakfast. I wear comfy pants, don't brush my hair, and maybe if I'm feeling fancy I'll put contacts in. But eventually it always happens, I wake up, look around, and realize my house is a disaster. It's messy everywhere, and it's all because of one little problem I have: I hate to clean.

Cleaning has got to be the most thankless of all the adult chores we face. It takes so much time and effort for such little reward. Sure you get that five minutes after you're done, when you sink into the couch exhausted, and you look around the place and think, "Yes, I am proud to live here". Then you blink and the mess starts again. If I had children I think I would just give up. As it is, if it can't be cleaned with a wipe, thank god for Lysol disposable wipes, it's probably not getting done on a regular basis. I've contemplated hiring someone to do the worst of it, the really thankless jobs. The floors - which thanks to gravity are always going to get stuff on them, the bathrooms - which is the room you clean yourself in so it takes the brunt of the filthiness, and dusting - which let's face it, no one in real life ever does. But to hire someone means that some stranger is coming into my sanctum, and finding out way too much about me. I remember my mother winning a cleaning service for mothers day for a month and rushing to clean up before the cleaning people got there, because you really don't want people to know the truth. You don't want to be fodder for their after work "how was your day dear?" stories with their significant other. Plus I feel bad, I really do have a lot of spare time, I really shouldn't pay someone to do things I can easily do myself.

So here I am realizing that the place is a mess. Where the heck do I even start? Our house is way too big for two people. When we first bought it we had three roommates sharing the place and it worked perfectly. But in the past 6 years or so things have changed, we've gotten older, and now it's just the two of us in this massive house. I've run the numbers, and to clean this place from top to bottom in a thorough fashion it would take me ALL weekend. I've tried breaking it up and assigning certain chores to each weekday, I even have an alarm on the phone that goes off to remind me, oh it's wednesday, time to clean the bathrooms. However it's way too easy to hit dismiss and justify putting it off... so by the weekend I've got the complete chore list to tackle. So that really only leaves one option, the half-assed clean. Basically I tackle what really needs to be done and leave the rest for emergency cleaning (as in, someone is coming over in ten minutes). I do it in an as needed fashion, as in I needed the coffee pot, so I had to clean the kitchen. I'll need clothes, so I'll tackle the laundry, and so on. Thankfully my husband shares my low standards. We're not living in a hoarders-like state of chaos, but if there is say, toothpaste on the mirror (and believe me there is), neither of us is all that worried about it.

Well now it seems this post has come to a natural ending. I've finished my coffee, wasted a half hour, and really should get back to business. I'm thinking some laundry, bathrooms, a quick vacuum, then I probably deserve to go boot shopping. Happy Saturday!